LAGOS – the management of Dangote Cement Plc, has denied any form of price increase in its cement product, clarifying that the product from its factories and plants nationwide sells for N2,450 in Obajana and Gboko, and N2,510 in Ibese-Yewa, inclusive of value-added tax (VAT).
Dangote’s Group Executive Director, Strategy, Portfolio Development & Capital Projects, Devakumar Edwin, who made the clarification recently, lamented on the misinformation in certain quarters, that it was selling cement in Nigeria at a significantly higher price relative to other countries, particularly Ghana and Zambia.
He explained that while a bag of cement sells for an equivalent of $5.1, including VAT in Nigeria, it goes for $7.2 in Ghana and $5.95 in Zambia ex-factory, taxes included.
Devakumar said though the company had direct control over its ex-factory prices, it however could not influence the pricing of the product when it gets to the market.
Dangote’s Group Executive Director, advised that “it was important to distinguish Dangote’s ex-factory prices from those at which retailers disposed of theirs.
To effectively puncture the deliberate de-marketing by vested interests, Edwin tendered before journalists at a news conference, invoices from Nigeria and some other African nations, including Cameroun, Ghana, Sierra Leone, and Zambia, even as the GED urged them to conduct independent inquiries into the price of cement across West Africa.
However, some Nigerians who talked to StarTrend Int’l magazine on the increase still don’t agreed with the management of Dangote’s excuses, saying, “it was the company that started the hyper-increase of the price of a bag of cement from N1,500 to N2500.”