Alhaji Aliko Dangote, the Chairman of Dangote Group, yesterday emphasized that once the Dangote Petroleum Refinery is fully functioning and begins offering diesel at greatly reduced prices, it will help alleviate Nigeria’s inflation concerns.
He said, “There’s quite a lot of improvement because if you look at it here, one of the major issues that we’ve had was the narrow devaluation that has gone very aggressively up to about N1,900. But right now we’re back to almost N1,250 or N1,300, which is a good improvement.
“And you can see quite a lot of things have actually gone up. Even people now when you go to the market, for example, something that we produce locally, like flour or whatever, people will charge you more.
“Why? Because they’re paying very high prices on diesel. And what we did, for example, in our refinery, we started selling even diesel about N1,200 for N1,650. And I’m sure, you know, as we go along, things will continue to improve quite a lot.”
“Well, even now it’s a lot of impact. If you look at it now, when you are buying N1,650 or N1,700 for a litre of diesel, and that one has been cut off by almost one third to now be paying diesel at N1,200.
“And, may be, eventually going forward, even though the crude prices are going up, even with that, I believe people will not get it much higher than what it is today.
“N1,200, it might be even a little bit lower. But that can help quite a lot. Because if you are transporting locally produced goods, rice and other stuff, you are paying N1,650. Now you are paying two thirds of that amount, N1,200. It’s a lot. It’s a lot of difference. People don’t know.
“That can actually help to bring inflation down immediately. And I’m sure when the inflation figures are out for the next month, you see that there’s quite a lot of improvement in the inflation rate.
“So one step at a time. And I’m sure the government is working round the clock to make sure that things get much better.
“Because it’s in their own interest. It’s in the interest of everybody, it’s in our own interest, and I just want to thank everybody.”
