By Halimah Olamide
The CEO, Dangote Industries Ltd., Alhaji Aliko Dangote, said that the Dangote Petroleum Refinery and the Fertiliser plant would be listed in the capital market by the first quarter of 2025.
Dangote made this known on Sunday in Lagos at a media parley and guided tour of the refinery and fertiliser plant by media executives.
He said that the conglomerate had so far invested 20 billion dollars in the refinery and 2.5 billion dollars in the fertiliser plant.
He described the completion of the refinery as another milestone for Dangote Industries Ltd.
“It is the largest single train refinery in the world with 650,000 barrels per day refining capacity,
“It marks the attainment of self-sufficiency in domestic refining of petroleum products and provides excess capacity in refined products which will go for the export market,’’ the industrialist said.
He noted that Dangote Industries Ltd. wanted to make sure that apart from domestic sales of its products, it would export the excess.
On funding, he said that the Federal Government had contributed 7.2 per cent of the total shares of the refinery.
He mentioned that for three consecutive times, the refinery had been able to bring the price of diesel below N1,100 per litre.
The industrialist noted that it was projected that the exportation of cement alone would fetch the conglomerate 325 million dollars annually.
He said that plans were also underway to add nine million tonnes of capacity to the cement industry by Dangote Cement Plc.
He pointed out that the conglomerate had the only cement company in Africa using robots.
Dangote advised Nigerians not just to acquire and store wealth but to invest in the country to encourage foreign investors to do the same.
He, however, advised that to get the economy on a more sound footing, Nigerian businessmen should not be import-dependent.
According to him, import dependency will impoverish the nation and turn the nation into a dumping ground.
“It is better to manufacture and grow the economy. If we allow imports so much, we may not be able to compete with other nations’’ Dangote said.