The House of Representative yesterday adopted the report of its Ad-Hoc Committee on Foreign loans which recommended the approval of $3.702 billion foreign loan for both Federal and state governments.
President Goodluck Jonathan had earlier in the year, asked the House to grant him approval to borrow about $5 billion from foreign sources to finance what he called “critical infrastructure” in the country.
“The projects in the 2010 external borrowing plan are valuable to the nation and need to be encouraged,” the committee observed in the report.
The MPs however, rejected the request by the Kano, Kaduna, Lagos, Cross Rivers and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) to borrow a whooping sum of $130 million to finance Entertainment, ICT, whole sale, Retail and Tourism arguing that, loans should not be used for such bogus and unrealistic projects.
In a letter addressed to Speaker Dimeji Bankole, the President said the loan was part of the external borrowing plan earlier approved by the National Assembly together with the 2010 Appropriation Act.
The House, however, set up the committee under the chairmanship of the House Whip Rep. Emeka Ihedioha (PDP, Imo) which invoked all the stake holders on the rationale for taking the loan.
It would be recalled that, the National Assembly had in April this year granted the President approval to take about 1$1 billion loan from the World Bank to finance the power sector reform projects.
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