BUA Chairman says the cement industry is vital for Nigeria's foreign exchange

Alhaji Abdulsamad Rabiu, chairman of BUA Group, has said that the local cement manufacturers produce over 25Mt cement thus saving the country US$2m annually in foreign exchange.

"The most important thing I think is that the cement industry in Nigeria will continue to save Nigeria a lot of foreign exchange. If for example, you look at what we have produced in Nigeria today, maybe 25Mt to 30Mt, if we quantify that in terms of foreign exchange it is almost two billion dollars per year," Raibu said.

"That is a lot of money being saved because if we do not have these cement plants definitely we have to import cement.

"And not only do we have to spend money in terms of foreign exchange import but the price of cement definitely would have been higher than what it is today,’" he added.

"The foreign exchange has also come down; it is stable even though as we all know the cement industry does not really require a lot of foreign exchange. But the fall in foreign exchange rate has really helped in terms of the things that we import into Nigeria like spare parts, some raw materials like gypsum," Raibu said.

Raibu was speaking after a Presidential Industrial Advisory Council meeting and also spoke about the expansion of his company's facilities to make more cement available for local consumption.

According to him, "we will be inaugurating our Sokoto plant next quarter, early 2018, and also our Edo second cement line will come on-stream probably by second quarter of next year."