Africa’s richest individual, Aliko Dangote, has revealed that his company secured in bank loans a swooping sum of about $5.5 billion to build the Dangote refinery.
Dangote made this disclosure on Wednesday during the ‘AfriCaribbean Trade and Investment Forum’ in The Bahamas.
The business mogul stated that the loan was secured from domestic banks across the continent based on the company’s balance sheet, not through project financing from international lenders.
Dangote explained that the loan, which accumulated interest because of delays in constructing the refinery, has been gradually repaid.
“When we were building the refinery, we knew that if we had gone with the idea of project financing, the international banks would have shut it down. They might have asked me for my great-grandmother’s certificate of birth which I don’t think I will be able to find it anyway.
“What we did was to borrow the money based on our own balanced sheet. At that time, Naira was very strong. We borrowed the money based on our own balanced sheet.
“We borrowed about $5.5 billion. We paid also a lot of interest as we went along because the project was delayed for almost five years. We started in 2018 eventually,” Dangote said.
$2.4 billion loan paid back
Speaking further, Dangote mentioned that about $2.4 billion of the loan taken to build the refinery has been repaid.
Accordingly, he noted that the company still owes approximately $2.7 billion and emphasized their impressive performance given the project’s scale.
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