President of the Dangote Group, Alhaji Aliko Dangote yesterday said Nigeria will be the largest exporter of urea in Africa by 2017.
Dangote stated 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.
The top 10 Urea exporting countries account for 70 per cent of global trade with China as the largest supplier. Urea, a white crystalline solid containing 46 per cent nitrogen, is widely used in the agricultural industry as an animal feed additive and fertilizer.
“Nigeria will be the biggest exporter of urea in Africa by 2017. Most of these plans are in the pipeline,” Dangote said.
He urged members of the private sector to support government’s efforts in diversifying the economy, saying: “Please, we should support the system.”
According to the richest man in Africa, 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.”
He added: “We should support the economy by improving its productive capacity. Based on our plans, we would be the highest seller of foreign exchange by the first 2018. Our plan now is to start exporting most of our other products.” – Thisday.
