Nigeria cement production to hit 28Mt By 2010
By 2010 Nigeria will be producing more than 28Mt of cement, a volume that will be more than the country’s need, according to Alhaji Alico Dangote.
Dangote who spoke with journalists at the Murtala Mohammed Airport, Lagos said that his company has a plan to set up additional plant at the Obajana cement factory that would be capable of producing 5Mt of cement, in addition to what the company and other cement manufactures are producing in the country.
Dangote who arrived at the Presidential Wing of the Airport with former President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, said that his organisation intends to export cement products after the local demand has been made.
"We believe that by the end of 2010 Nigeria should produce 28Mt of cement, which is more than what we need and we expect to export some of these to Ghana and other African countries that are not producing",he said.
The business mogul allayed fears that the rainy season will affect the prices of cement products, remarking that they are working on increasing production after the rains.
"After the rain we should be able to bring in about 500 trucks of cement a day and hopefully Benue would be about 200 trucks at that time.You see, we always have to talk about factory price, we cannot talk about what people sell in the market because we don’t control the transportation, we try as much as possible to sell it at a lower price."
He added, "We sell about N1,100 and that is inclusive of VAT (value added tax),our price is not even up to N1,100 and the VAT is for the government, it doesn’t affect us, it doesn’t come back to us, Dangote said.
He explained that the demand for cement is high because of the increase in population, but urged Nigerians to be patient because solution to the protracted scarcity over the years is about to be solved.
"By and large, you have to exercise some patience because cement production in Nigeria was neglected for a long period of time, but as we are developing,our population was increasing and nobody was actually investing money to produce cement’, he noted.
Published under Cement News
