By Dipo Olowookere
A seven-year term loan of $650 million has been obtained by Mr Aliko Dangote for his oil refinery located in the Lekki area of Lagos State.
The loan was secured by the Africa’s richest man from the Cairo-based African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank).
An Executive Director of Dangote Group, Mr Devakumar Edwin, disclosed that the oil refinery is expected to gulp about $10 billion and should be completed by December 2019.
He said the company would borrow $3.3 billion for the project, arranged by Standard Chartered Bank, while the remainder will be funded by equity and through export agencies.
Mr Dangote is building the world’s largest single oil refinery and also expanding into fertilizer, aiming to address long-standing problems in Nigeria’s energy markets.
The refinery and petrochemical complex is located on 25,000 hectares of swampy land with a jetty to ferry products by sea within Nigeria and abroad including an undersea pipeline to transport gas.
It would account for half of Dangote’s sprawling assets when it is finished next year.
At the annual general meeting and 25th anniversary of Afreximbank on Saturday in Abuja, the Africa’s trade bank also signed a $750 million facility with Nigeria’s development bank, the Bank of Industry (BoI).
Afreximbank, celebrating its 25 years of operation this year, aims to foster intra-African trade through the creation of a payment platform to ease settlement and currency risks.
