Russia may give new life to the largest steel plant in Nigeria after decades of inactivity. Construction Ajaokuta Steel Co. started in 1979 with the assistance of the then Soviet Union, but the factory and began to produce steel, although he had spent $ 8 billion of public money. Repeated attempts to revive the flagship project by transferring it to private investors was not successful.
As reported in Bloomberg< / span> with reference to the Minister for mining and metallurgy of Nigeria, Olamilekan Adegbite, Russian engineering and construction group MetProm will conduct the necessary work of putting the object into operation, with funding from the state JSC "Russian export centre" and the Cairo African export-import Bank.
Both governments intend to finalize a deal by January, after which it will require no more than two years for the completion of a blast furnace, said Adegbite.
"the Russian export centre and the African export-import Bank is considering the possibility of funding Ajaokuta," - said Moscow development Institute in response to the questions Bloomberg e-mail, refusing to further refinements.
to increase the steel production and mining operations was declared in the plans for diversification of the Nigerian economy, which refers to the increase in shares of MMC in the country's GDP to 3% by 2025. While Nigeria has considerable unused reserves of commodities, including iron ore, gold, lead and zinc there are no major industrial enterprises for the production of steel products and today the sector accounts for less than 1% of the GDP of Nigeria.
