Following the loss of America’s
market for its crude oil last year, China has stepped forward to fill the gap
by pledging to buy more oil from Nigeria. According to the country’s Deputy
Chief of Mission in Nigeria, Mr. Zhang Bin, the Chinese government is looking
forward to importing more of Nigeria's oil, reported the News Agency of Nigeria
(NAN). Zhang said China was interested in Nigeria’s oil and that when President
Goodluck Jonathan visited China in 2013, the country discussed the possibility
of importing more oil from Nigeria. He also said the trade volume between
Nigeria and China in 2014 exceeded $16 billion, but his country was looking at
possibilities of improving balancing of trade with Nigeria. Zhang said the
figure exceeded that of 2013, which he put at $13.5 billion. He said: “In 2013,
the trade volume between Nigeria and China was $13.5 billion and then according
to our statistics, from January to November 2014, the trade volume already
amounted to $16.47 billion. So that means that in the first 11 months, the
trade volume exceeded that of the year 2013, which indicates an increase of 35
per cent over the previous year. We do have this problem of trade imbalance and
the Chinese side is going all out to solve it. One of the solutions is that we
encourage more Chinese enterprises and companies to import more from Nigeria,
especially agriculture products and also some of the manufactured products.”
The envoy explained that a few years ago, China started importing cassava and
some agriculture products like cocoa and palm oil from Nigeria. Zhang said due
to the joint efforts of both sides, imports into China from Nigeria had
increased by a large margin last year. According to him, in the first 11
months, there was an increase of 93.7 per cent in China’s imports from Nigeria,
adding that the import percentage was almost doubled. The Chinese official said
his country encourages its companies in Nigeria to invest in telecommunications,
agriculture, automobile assembling, food processing, energy, mines and solid
minerals. Zhang said China's competitive telecommunication companies like
Huawei and ZTE currently supply the Nigeria’s network operators with terminals
and broad bands. Zhang revealed that the business volume of just one Chinese
telecommunication company in Nigeria for a year was huge, putting it at about
$1 billion. According to him, China and Nigeria were also working on other
projects like the rehabilitation projects for the Nigerian Railway Corporation
and the Zungeru hydropower project in Niger State.
ThisDay (online)
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