Nigeria Gets $5bn Line Of Credit Offer From India

Nigeria can explore $5bn line of credit with low interest rate from India, the Indian High Commissioner to Nigeria, Abhay Thakur, has said.

Thakur made the disclosure when he visited the Minister of Communications, Adebayo Shittu, according to a statement made available to our correspondent in Abuja on Monday.

He said that the Prime Minister of India made available to Africa $10bn credit line during India – Africa Forum Summit out of which only fifty per cent had been utilised.

The Indian envoy added that Nigeria had the opportunity to explore the credit line which had an interest rate of only 1.75 per cent.

“This is a good facility which to my knowledge half of it has just been utilised and for Nigeria, we can enhance our areas of collaboration,” the envoy said.

Thakur said India was making moves to upgrade the bilateral agreement existing between both countries in the areas of human capacity development, e-government, industrialisation and Information and Communications Technology.

Responding, Shittu said India was one of the best countries Nigeria had enjoyed a relationship with in terms of partnership.

Shittu said, “In the area of bilateral agreement, we can raise a team to work on crucial areas and look at the details and appraise what we can do on low hanging fruit that would be beneficial to both countries.

“A lot of Indian companies had often indicated interest to invest in Nigeria by way of establishing industries but rarely translate such into action, hence, the need to encourage them to translate such interest into reality.”

The minister called on the envoy to encourage India investors to establish a 5G village in Nigeria and also partner with stakeholders in building the proposed ICT Park in Abuja which is expected to be located in a free trade zone that would add beauty and elegance to the country as well as boost revenue base of the investors.