The Dangote Refinery is expected to save Nigeria about $10 billion in foreign exchange when completed.
Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, who during a visit to the refinery in Ibeju Lekki Lagos, said the huge investment by Dangote Group would enable Nigeria to stop the importation of fuel.
According to a recent publication on Nariametrics, the National Nigerian Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) disclosed that the nation is expected to stop petrol importation by 2023.
“This is a very important project one of the largest refineries in the world today. Mr President is very proud of this project and we speak about it everywhere we go in terms of the number of jobs which it is creating and the good that it will be bringing to our economy.
“And for us in government, that is a saving of at least $10bn that will be sitting in our reserves instead of flying out to pay for petroleum products.
“In the Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning, we have had the opportunity to interface with your company (Dangote Group) at different times to provide you with some clearance you required as you bring in equipment and as you move from one step to another, and I used to be alarmed at some of the size of the requests. But now, I do understand that this is very big and it is very important for this country.”
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Aliko Dangote, the President, Dangote Group, speaking about potential cash inflow of the site, which houses also a petrochemical and fertilizer plant, said that the group’s revenue would increase from $4 billion to $30 billion after the completion of the projects in 2021. He added that the refinery aimed to become one of the major suppliers of foreign exchange in Nigeria, Punch reported.
“We have the refinery, petrochemicals and fertiliser plants coming on stream; we have over a million tonnes of rice; we have about 600,000 tonnes of locally made sugar, and our cement business would have grown further – we are finishing by the end of this year or the beginning of January next year our eight-million export facility. What we are trying to do is to totally turn around the company,” Aliko Dangote said.
Meanwhile, with 650 000 barrels per day, the refinery is set to meet all of the country’s needs for liquid petroleum products and also help the country save face. After many years of crude oil production, the nation doesn’t have a functioning refinery and this has resulted in using hard-earned foreign exchange to import back the oil it had produced.
With the onboarding of the Dangote Refinery, the country could see a drop in prices of petroleum products as a result of the reduced cost of production.
