Dangote, financiers to sign $5.55bn refinery loan deal
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| Chief Aliko Dangote |
The Dangote Group has said it will sign $5.55bn loan deals with financiers on September 4 for the building of a $9bn refinery and petrochemical complex to be located at the Olokola Free Trade Zone, Ondo State.
The group told Reuters on Tuesday it would borrow $3.3bn for the 400,000 barrels a day refinery expected to double the country’s refining capacity by late 2016.
The conglomerate, with business interests in cement, food processing and oil and gas, also said it was seeking another $2.25bn from development funds for the refinery.
When put together, about $5.55bn will be sourced externally from financiers and the group said the loan deals would be signed with the financiers on September 4.
The Chairman, Dangote Group, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, who recently emerged as Africa’s richest man, said he would put $3.5bn down as his own equity.
Dangote had in April said he would put down $4bn of his personal fortune to build the refinery, while international financial institutions would raise the balance.
The Dangote Group spokesman, Mr. Anthony Chiejina, who spoke with Reuters, said, “We are not resting on our oars. The complex, including petrochemical and fertiliser plants, could be the single largest contribution to this government’s economic transformation agenda.”
The 400,000-barrel capacity, experts have said, would almost double Nigeria’s current refining strength.
“This will really help not only Nigeria but sub-Saharan Africa. There has not been a new refinery for a long time in sub-Saharan Africa,” Dangote had told Reuters in a telephone interview.
Nigeria currently has the capacity to produce some 445,000 barrels per day from four refineries, which operate well below that owing to decades of mismanagement and corruption.
The country relies on subsidised imports for 80 per cent of its fuel needs.
Dangote said the country’s ability to import fuel would soon be challenged.
“In five years, when our population is over 200 million, we won’t have the infrastructure to receive the amount of fuel we use. It has to be done,” he said.
Past efforts to build refineries have often been delayed or cancelled, but analysts have said Dangote should be able to build a profitable Nigerian refinery, owing to his past successes in industry and his strong government connections.
Analysts have said previous attempts to get the refineries going were held back by vested interests such as fuel importers profiting from the status quo.
“The people who were supposed to invest in refineries, who understand the market, are benefiting from there being no refineries because of the fuel import business. Some are going to try to interfere,” Dangote said.
He said making a new refinery run at a profit would work even if the government failed to scrap the subsidised fuel price that has deterred others from investing.
- The Punch
