Dangote Refinery Will Save Nigeria Over $10bn ― Finance Minister

The Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Mrs Zainab Ahmed expressed the eagerness of President Muhammadu Buhari administration for the Dangote Refinery to commence operation, says it will not only save the country over $10 billion spend on crude importation but also create jobs.

Speaking while been conducted round the ongoing Dangote Petroleum Refinery, Petrochemical complex, fertilizer plant and Subsea gas pipeline projects, Zainab said that the government will continue to provide enabling environment to grow local business and attract investors.

“We are very confident that once Dangote refinery commences operation it will save us over $10 billion Nigeria spent on importing crude oil and also help to build local capacity and create jobs. The money we save will help to strengthen our macroeconomy which will, in turn, encourage investors to come in.

The Minister who also inspect the ongoing Apapa-Oshodi-Ojota-Oworonshoki Expressway, however, assured Dangote group of the Federal government support in ensure the reality of the project,

“We are going to be providing some intervention in area of duty and some tax waver which is available to every organization in that sector and part of my visit is to see the benefit of incentive we have been providing.

On his part, President of Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote said that on completion of the refinery project next year, they intend to grow the company revenue from $4 billion to $30 billion while creating massive employment opportunity.

“By the time we finished this refinery and other projects, for us as a company we are going to record a major change, we are looking at moving from $4 billion revenue to $30 billion revenue. That will strengthen us to invest more money in our domestic economy.

“We don’t want Nigeria to be an import base economy but rather export base economy. We have tried that in cement and it has really work in the sense that we are looking at exporting almost $400million to $500 million worth of cement in the next one to two years.

Aliko explained that due to inability of local construction companies to handle some of the aspects of the ongoing project, they were left with no other option than to procure some of the equipment, “we have to buy some of the equipment we use for construction as they were not readily available within the country. After this refinery project, with the kind of modern and sophisticated equipment at our disposal we may move into the construction industry.

Speaking on the capacity of the refinery, Aliko said that it will be the single largest train petroleum refinery in the world with 650,000 barrels per day with 838 KTPA polypropylene plant, “largest sub-sea pipeline infrastructure in any country in the world with 1,1pp km to handle 3 billion SCF of gas per day.

“Our refinery can meet 100 per cent of the Nigerian requirement of all liquid products such as gasoline, diesel, kerosene and aviation jet. It will also have a surplus of each of these products for export.

He disclosed that after completion of all the projects it will have capacity to generate over 280, 000 direct and indirect jobs.