Africa's richest man, Aliko Dangote, says Nigeria's economic reality is
being exaggerated and is not as bad as it is being portrayed. Dangote
said this while speaking at the Economist Forum in Lagos, yesterday
March 7th. Dangote said while some businesses faced serious challenges,
others did not.
“It all depends on the business. I think people are underrating the
economy of Nigeria. They just go and look at foreign exchange because
oil has gone down and believe that everything has gone out of the
window. That is not correct”.
He said despite what is being described as an economic crisis in
Nigeria, his company, Dangote Cement, recorded 47 per cent growth in
January and February.
"We have seen growth in our sugar business of about 20 per cent. If your
business model is to import 100 per cent of your component and just be
an assembly plant, then definitely you will face challenges because the
influx of foreign exchange is not like what it used to be a year and
half ago when we used to receive about 3.2 billion dollars on monthly
basis and our outflow was around two billion dollars. Today, we are
receiving just about a billion dollars. In our cement sector, we had
that vision and we said let us properly industrialise. By this, we mean
that our raw materials are almost 90 percent locally sourced. So we only
need foreign exchange to buy spare parts, pay some of our expatriate
staff salaries in dollars and a get a little bit of gipson which is not
readily available here.”he said
Dangote added that the only option left for businesses in Nigeria was to export.
“We now have capacity to export cement worth about 500 million dollars
on an annual basis. With that, it means that we are self-sufficient. If
you look at most of our projects, they are all very transformational
projects because we saw this coming. In the last ten years, we said we
want to do things in a manner that by 2018, we don’t have to go to the
Central Bank of Nigeria to ask for foreign exchange. We want to be
people who will sale forex to the market.”he said
Source: Daily Trust...
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