Nigeria’s Minister of Solid Minerals, Dr. Oladele Alake, has hailed the $1 billion new iron ore to the steel project planned for Kogi State in northern Nigeria as a breakthrough in the Nigerian Government’s push for local value addition in the sector.
The project, a collaboration between Nigeria’s Chart and Capstone Integrated Limited and China’s Sinomach-He, marks a pivotal step in the Nigerian Government’s drive to prioritize local value addition over raw mineral exports.
The statement by the Special Adviser to the Minister of Solid Minerals, Kehinde Bamigbetan, on Sunday quoted the minister as saying that the project was a breakthrough in the government’s efforts to revamp the sector.
“He said the Federal Government has reversed the pit to port policy under which mining companies exported raw minerals to extraction with local value addition which is the best guarantee of jobs for the youths, skills transfer and better balance of trade between the country and her trading partners,” the statement said.
It added that the new policy requires that applicants for mining licenses include plans for processing raw minerals locally, a move Alake said would enhance Nigeria’s trade balance, particularly with China.
“The trade balance between Nigeria and China is over one billion dollars in favour of China because the minerals imported from Nigeria are essentially in raw forms,” Alake noted, referring to the meeting in Beijing, China, during President Bola Tinubu’s visit to China.
“Once Nigeria starts to export finished or semi-finished value-added mineral products, our balance of trade will be more favourable, and our foreign exchange earnings will improve.
“With aggressive local value addition and the revenue from it, the prospects of reducing our debt burden in the nearest future is possible,” the minister said.
GIK/APA