Yemisi Izuora
The President of the Dangote Group, Alhaji Aliko Dangote has said that Nigeria will be the largest exporter of urea in Africa by 2017.
He said this at an interactive session between members of the organised private sector and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor, Mr. Godwin Emefiele on recent developments in the global oil prices and its effect on Nigeria’s foreign exchange market.
“Nigeria will be the biggest exporter of urea in Africa by 2017. He assured that plans are in the pipeline, and that very soon the product will be exported” Dangote said.
He implored the members of the private sector to assist government’s efforts in diversifying the economy, and that they should support the system.
Dangote further stressed that, the development in the global oil market creates an opportunity to refocus the Nigerian economy.
“It is just an opportunity for us to sit down and talk to ourselves about how to diversify the economy and encourage more exports; because that is the way we should be going instead of going to the Central Bank of Nigeria everyday to buy forex. By 2020, the population of this country is going to be 210 million and are we going to continue to be importing then? Can we afford to be importing then for such a huge population?
“A lot of people want to wake up and see the external reserves would just be increasing, but is not going to be easy because revenue has gone down by 55 per cent,” he said.
While responding to an earlier statement by the CBN governor that sugar is one of the items importers always seek forex to import, Dangote said: “I can assure you that in the next four years, you will not allocate forex for sugar importation.”