 Against the backdrop of the rising fiscal deficit and debt burden, the federal government is taking steps to offer some of its assets valued at over 30 trillion Naira held in over 60 enterprises and agencies for sale through equity investments while raising revenue through road tolls. The Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning Zainab Ahmed disclosed this at a 2023 budget breakdown in Abuja. To effectively execute this agenda, she said the Ministry of Finance, Incorporated MOFI had been reinvigorated with the Board of its own to make it more responsive to its mandate. The actual spending as at the end of August is 9.56 trillion, this is about 83% of the prorated target and of this spending 3.52 trillion was for debt service, 2.89 trillion was for personal costs and including pensions while 1.78 billion was released for capital expenditure based on the 18 months extension that was announced by government early 2022. In this regard, only 3.36 trillion has been provided for PMS subsidy for the year 2023. Overall, the budget deficit is 10.78 trillion for 2023 and this represents 4.78% of GDP. Again, this is higher than the 3% that is set by the Fiscal Responsibility Act. The budget deficit is to be financed mainly by domestic borrowing as well as foreign borrowing. Domestic borrowing at 7.04 trillion while foreign borrowing is at 1.76 trillion. The total debt portfolio of our country today is at 102 billion US dollars, of the total debt size 35% is foreign, 65%. Hello, hope you enjoyed the news, please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.