N.L. Arodoye

This study examines the effect of public debt on investment in Nigeria from 1981 to 2023. The study focuses on how domestic and external borrowings influence gross fixed capital formation, which represents investment performance. Annual data were sourced from the Central Bank of Nigeria, Debt Management Office, World Bank, and National Bureau of Statistics. The Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) and Error Correction Model (ECM) techniques were applied to capture both short-run and long-run relationships among the variables, supported by standard diagnostic tests for reliability and consistency.
The findings reveal that both domestic and external debts exert a negative and significant impact on investment in Nigeria. Inflation, interest rate, and exchange rate volatility were also found to weaken investment performance. The results suggest that rising public debt has not been effectively used to stimulate productive investment, as debt servicing continues to consume a large portion of government revenue. The study recommends prudent borrowing, improved debt management, and channelling of borrowed funds into productive sectors to enhance sustainable investment growth in Nigeria.

This paper examines the impact of value added tax and budget deficit on economic performance in Nigeria. The main objective of this study is to examine the interrelationship among value added tax, budget deficit and economic performance proxied as gross domestic product (GDP) in Nigeria during the period under study. The study utilized aggregate annual data from 1980 to 2018. The data was analyzed with the co-integration/ VECM method. The major findings are: the test for stationary using Augmented Dickey Fuller (ADF) which showed that all the variables except budget deficit were not stationary in levels but were all stationary in first difference. The Johansen-Juselius co-integration techniques were employed in testing for long run equilibrium
relationship among the variables and the results indicated that co-integrating relationship was found among the variables. The coefficient of determination reveals that about 88% of the systematic variation in the dependent variable (GDP) is explained by the five independent variables which are value added tax, budget deficit, exchange rate, consumer price index and real interest rate. Also, the vector error correction model (VECM) shows that about 22% of the discrepancy between the actual and the long run or equilibrium value in the real gross domestic product is corrected or eliminated each year. Furthermore, the result revealed that value added tax, budget deficit, and exchange rate has positive and insignificant effect on GDP in Nigeria, while consumer price index has positive and significant impact on GDP in Nigeria based on the magnitude and the level of significance of the coefficient and p-value. The result also reveals that there is long run relationship between value added tax, budget deficit and gros domestic product as evidenced by the VECM. The paper concluded that Government and policy makers should carefully study the present state of the economy and properly estimate the effects of various alternative policy measures of financing fiscal deficits. And also government should supervise the collection of VAT revenue to ensure orderly, fair and equitable dealings in the collection of VAT revenue and to forestall illegal deals by privilege insiders so as to raise the revenue as effectively and efficiently as possible.

This paper examines the impact of value added tax and budget deficit on economic performance in Nigeria. The main objective of this study is to examine the interrelationship among value added tax, budget deficit and economic performance proxied as gross domestic product (GDP) in Nigeria during the period under study. The study utilized aggregate annual data from 1980 to 2018. The data was analyzed with the co-integration/ VECM method. The major findings are: the test for stationary using Augmented Dickey Fuller (ADF) which showed that all the variables except budget deficit were not stationary in levels but were all stationary in first difference. The Johansen-Juselius co-integration techniques were employed in testing for long run equilibrium relationship among the variables and the results indicated that co-integrating relationship was found among the variables. The coefficient of determination reveals that about 88% of the systematic variation in the dependent variable (GDP) is explained by the five independent variables which are value added tax, budget deficit, exchange rate, consumer price index and real interest rate. Also, the vector error correction model (VECM) shows that about 22% of the discrepancy between the actual and the long run or equilibrium value in the real gross domestic product is corrected or eliminated each year. Furthermore, the result revealed that value added tax, budget deficit, and exchange rate has positive and insignificant effect on GDP in Nigeria, while consumer price index has positive and significant impact on GDP in Nigeria based on the magnitude and the level of significance of the coefficient and p-value. The result also reveals that there is long run relationship between value added tax, budget deficit and gross domestic product as evidenced by the VECM. The paper concluded that Government and policy makers should carefully study the present state of the economy and properly estimate the effects of various alternative policy measures of financing fiscal deficits. And also government should supervise the collection of VAT revenue to ensure orderly, fair and equitable dealings in the collection of VAT revenue and to forestall illegal deals by privilege insiders so as to raise the revenue as
effectively and efficiently as possible.