President of Dangote Industries, Aliko Dangote, has accused Tanzanian President John Magufuli of scaring away foreigners through policies which appear designed to seize a majority share of assets belonging to such investors.
He made this revelation at the Financial Times Africa Summit in London. Dangote has a large chunk of investment in Tanzania with a 650 million Dollars cement plant in Mtwara, about 400km from Dar es Salaam the capital.
Dangote criticised parliamentary plan to allow the government to take 16 per cent of an investor’s assets for free.
“It’s coming through the back door to seize the assets, They can come back in the next few years and take a majority of the shares at their price.”
Dangote advised President Magufuli to “have a look at” his policies.
“They’ve scared quite a lot of investors and scaring investors is not a good thing to do,” “Once an investor complains the rest will run away, they don’t even want to hear the details.”
He came to power two years ago promising to clean up the country’s endemic corruption. Investors initially welcomed his efforts, but have become increasingly alarmed at policies, such as those affecting tax demands and contract sanctity, have become more arbitrary.The Tanzanian President has in recent months put pressure on many investors as part of his campaign to fight corruption and government inefficiency.
Popularly known as “Buldozer”,the Magufuli administration had accused Acacia Mining of underpaying $190bn in taxes, prompting the miner to scale back some of its operations. The action has caused London-listed Acacia’s shares to fall by almost 50 per cent this year, thereby making the miner unable to export from the country since March. This action from the government has made Acacia Mining to reduce operations at its flagship Bulyanhulu gold mine in the country.
“It’s the wrong policy. Once you chase an investor out, it will be very difficult to bring that investor back. dangote said”
Dangote Cement was commissioned in December 2015 and is the largest cement factory in Tanzania. With about 500 million tonnes of limestone reserves, enough for 149 years, the plant is capable of producing large amounts of high-quality 32.5 and 42.5 grade cements to meet local market needs at competitive prices, as well as surrounding export markets by sea.
Dangote Cement is Africa’s leading cement producer with operations in 10 African countries, revenues of US$2 billion in 2016 and nearly 17,000 employees.
It is a fully integrated quarry-to-customer producer with production capacity of 45.8 million tonnes per annum (Mta) across Africa at the end of May 2017.
The industry has operational facilities in Cameroon, Ghana, Ethiopia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia. We plan to open new import or grinding facilities in Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire by 2019.
Dangote Cement is the largest company on the Nigerian Stock Exchange, having listed its shares in October 2010.
