Asian Journal of Economics, Finance and Management

This research paper investigates on the effect of disaggregated public debt (internal, external and debt servicing) on economic growth in Nigeria within the periods of 1991-2020. The study regresses output growth on internal debt, external debt, debt servicing, exchange rate and inflation rate. The augmented Dickey Fuller test showed that the variables are stationary at both levels and first difference. Based on the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) estimator, the result revealed that there exist a long run relationship between public debt and economic growth in Nigeria. The findings showed that internal debt has negative and significant effect on output growth both in short- and long-run. However, external debt negatively impacted short-run output growth while the long run impact is not statistically significant. Debt servicing has positive effect on short-run income growth but negatively influenced output growth in the long-run. Based on the finding from the study, government should reduce external debt and the ones obtained should be strictly use for purposes intended to ensure positive effect. Also, it is suggested that government should cut down in both borrowings to ensure economic stability and sustainable growth. Further, in order to achieve SDG 3(sustainable growth), authorities need to reduce borrowings and maintain economic stability.