Government Integrated Financial Management Information System (GIFMIS) and Public Debt Management in Nigeria

Abstract

This study investigated the relevance of GIFMIS in the management of public debt in Nigeria. GIFMIS is presented as dummy variables (0) and (1) for periods before and after GIFMIS, respectively. Debt management is represented by debt service expenditure for eighteen (18) fiscal years (2003-2021), covering nine years (2003-2011) prior to (2012) and nine years (2013-2021) after (2012) GIFMIS implementation in Nigeria. Expost-Facto research design was used, and Auto-Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) was estimated using the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) approach. The statistical package used for analysis is e-view 10.0. The R-squared coefficient suggested that the change in GIFMIS caused an 8.73% shift in debt management. The impact of GIFMIS on Nigerian debt management was determined to be beneficial but not significant. This suggests that the implementation of the GIFMIS program, resulted in a positive boost in debt management in Nigeria, with a 41.25% increase at an insignificant rate. It consequently determined that GIFMIS is of paramount importance in debt management in Nigeria based on the difference it has made within the short period of its adoption in debt management in Nigeria. Finally, the report recommends that more efforts be directed towards extending the implementation of technological innovations in Nigeria to enhance accountability and transparency in development planning, budgeting, and debt management.