According to the Central Bank of Nigeria, during the fiscal year 2024–2025, it will continue to advance funds to the federal government through the Ways and Means program, with a maximum benchmark of 5 percent.

In a document published on its official website on Tuesday, the apex bank revealed this information under the heading “Monetary, credit, foreign trade, and exchange policy guidelines for the fiscal years 2024–2025.”

According to the CBN Act, Ways and Means cannot exceed five percent of the federal government’s revenue from the previous year.

But over time, the previous administration had over the readable Ways and Means cap, which was against the law.

In the meantime, CBN stated in the most recent guidelines that it would keep funding the federal government through various channels.

The regulator stated that the Federal Government will still be able to finance budgetary deficits up to a maximum of 5.0 percent of actual revenue generated in the prior year through the use of Ways and Means Advances.

According to the CBN, these advances must be repaid “at the end of the year in which it was granted” and liquidated “as soon as possible.”

Ways and Means Advances would now be calculated after identifying the sub-accounts of the various MDAs, which are now linked to the Consolidated Revenue Fund (CRF) to arrive at the FGN consolidated cash position, in accordance with the banking arrangement of the Treasury Single Account (TSA), the apex bank stated.

Remember that the CBN’s governor, Olayemi Cardoso, declared on February 9, 2024, that the financial institution will stop making advances to the federal government, “until all outstanding debts are refunded.”

His remarks coincide with the national assembly of Nigeria reiterating its attempt to raise the ways and means cap to ten percent.

In order to do this, a bill that aimed to increase the federal government’s revenue from 5 percent to 10 percent passed the Senate on its second reading in February.