Impact of External Debt Stock and Servicing onthe Growth of Nigeria’s Economy: 1986-2019.

The amount of capital available in most developing countries treasury is grossly inadequate to meet their economic growth needs mainly due to their low productivity, low savings and high consumption pattern. Most countries resort to borrowing to promote economic growth and development, by creating conducive environmentfor people to invest in various sectors of their economies. However, despite the huge amount of expenditures made in critical sectors of the economy, with the aim of achieving economic growth and development, high unemployment, poverty, and low standard of living is still prevalent in the country. This seminar thus examined the impact ofexternal debt stock and servicing on economic growth in Nigeria between 1986 and 2019. Pre-estimation test using Augmented Dickey- Fuller (ADF) unit root test was carried out in the course of the study to avoid spurious regression results. The result revealed that there exists mixed order of integration amongst the variables which informed the use of Bounds test approach to cointegration. The co-integration result showed that long- run equilibrium relationship exists between external debt stock, servicing and economic growth in Nigeria. The findings of the study have shown that Nigeria's external debt stock has a significant influence on economic growth. Furthermore, findings from the study showed that external debt servicing has a significant but negative impact on economic growth in Nigeria. The implication of this result is that the debt services crowd out public investment as it depletes government budget resources thus reducing fund availablefor productive investment. Based on thesefindings, the study recommends that Debt Management Office (DMO) should set mechanisms in motion to ensure that loans are utilized for the purpose for which they were acquired. The government should actively pursue the process of diversification of the economy in order to minimise the service of external debts accumulated by repeated borrowing; and finally, policy makers should be encouraged to aggressively pursue the process of diversification ofthe economy in order to reduce our debt interest burden..