Popular Nigerian business mogul, Aliko Dangote, has revealed that he is quite comfortable with Donald Trump’s tariffs on his urea exports to America.
He recently said that he has no issues with the adjustment, especially because his major rival in the business, Algeria, got hit with a higher levy.
Recall that Trump recently imposed a 14% tariff on imports from Africa’s largest oil exporter, Nigeria, as part of his controversial trade adjustments introduced in April. And even if the tariff was recently halted for 3 months, its initial announcement has affected Nigeria’s relations with various markets across the globe.
Dangote said that even if he was initially wary about the tariff affecting exports from Dangote Fertiliser, he was more than relieved when he was told another major urea exporter, Algeria, was slammed with a higher tariff.
“But when I checked who we are really competing with, we are competing with Algeria. So luckily for us Algeria were slapped with 30%. So it actually makes us a bit comfortable,” he said.
According to him, since 37% of Dangote Fertiliser’s urea output is regularly shipped to America, the U.S. has always been identified as a vital market for the product, therefore, he cannot afford to be sidelined by rivals hoping to shove his company aside.
The $2.5 billion plant, situated on 500 hectares of land in the Lekki Free Trade Zone, is the widest granulated urea fertiliser complex on the continent, with a production capacity of 3 million metric tonnes yearly.
Aliko exports urea from his plant to different markets all over the world, including Brazil, a country that currently relies majorly on Russian, Mexican and Indian fertiliser imports.
Apart from Dangote Fertiliser, the businessman is also the chairman of Africa’s largest oil refinery, which began operations early last year after a very long delay. With its refining capacity of 650,000 barrels on a daily basis, the $20 billion project has massively decreased the country’s dependence on imported petroleum products.
Aliko has since revealed that he sees overall revenues for his sugar, fertiliser, energy, and cement companies exceeding $30 billion by 2026, up from a projected $25 billion this year.
He believes his target would definitely be reached amid the heightened operations across all of his businesses.
