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Business
Words in the News
Friday 30 August 2002
Vocabulary from the business news. Listen to and read the report
then find explanations of difficult words below.
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Nigeria halts debt repayments
Summary: Nigeria, one of the world's largest oil-producing nations, has been experiencing severe economic difficulties and the Nigerian authorities have this week announced they are stopping all foreign debt repayments for the rest of the year. This report from Dan Isaacs
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The
News 
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Finance minister Adamu Ciroma has made it clear that Nigeria will have great difficulty paying any further debt servicing until parliament approves more funds. He said only one and a half billion US dollars was allocated for the current financial year, a little less than half the required total of 3.3 billion.
Although it's been known for some months that Nigeria has been struggling to meet its commitments to its outstanding debt of around thirty billion US dollars, this is the first time the country has completely halted payments. In a speech on Tuesday the central bank governor Joseph Sanusi said Nigeria's failed to meet its payments in July which technically puts the country in default.
Put simply, Nigeria is spending faster than it's earning and is falling deeper into deficit as a result. Earlier this year the International Monetary Fund parted company with Nigeria over the issue of excessive spending and with national elections only a few months away, there's little sign of any fiscal restraint on the part of the government.
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The
Words
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debt servicing
paying interest on debts
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funds
an amount of money available for spending
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struggling to meet its commitments
finding it difficult make necessary payments
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outstanding debt
money which is still owed
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halted
stopped
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in default
if you fail to repay a debt, you are legally in default
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into deficit
if a country spends more money than it earns, that extra amount is a deficit
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parted company
if you part company, you stop working together because of a disagreement
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excessive
much more than necessary
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fiscal restraint
carefully controlled spending - a formal expression
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Read
more about this story |
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