The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has put a N75 billion seed capital to support Dangote Crude oil Refinery, one of the largest refinery outfits globally and set to be completed by 2020.
The governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria Godwin Emefiele who visited the site weekend announced the funding support on Tuesday, saying the refinery was an outcome of government’s insistence on restructuring the base of the economy.
“The project cost is about $9billion, Dangote has provided nothing less than 50 percent equity, the balance is being funded by local and foreign banks and out of that CBN has sown a seed of about N75 billion which is less than $300 million,” he said, briefing the press. Emefiele said that by the time the 650,000 barrel per day crude refinery comes on stream, Nigeria will not just be self-sufficient in the production of refined petroleum products, but will become a net exporter of the products earning nothing less than $7.5 billion annually and saving the country billions of dollars.
He said also that the expectation is that by the time the Dangote fertilizer project operational in April, Nigeria will be self-sufficient in the production of fertilizer “so that we will also be exporting the product.” He said this explained why the CBN recently banned access to foreign exchange for fertilizer import.
He said the refinery will also link into the petrochemical plant where raw material for petrochemical plant will be produced. The project is expected to produce 883 KPTA polypropylene plant, three million tons per annum urea plant and 1,100 kilometres sub-sea pipeline infrastructure.
The governor said the funding assistance is not just about Dangote but that the CBN stands ready to support any potential investor with either local or foreign currency intervention to enable them set up and import plant and necessary equipment.
Emefiele had toured the two sites at the weekend to show CBN’s support to what he called a “laudable project that will transform Nigeria’s downstream oil sector”.
Onyinye Nwachukwu, Abuja
