Nigeria’s economic crisis is being exaggerated– Dangote

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...