(Ecofin Agency) - Nigeria, Africa’s second largest crude oil producer, plans to raise $1.2billion through planned financial package, the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Emmanuel Kachikwu (photo), revealed. This fund when raised will be used to upgrade the country’s ailing refineries, as part of plans to put an end to its dependence on imports of oil products by 2019.

“We are still far from signing any contract with anybody. The technical committee is still working on it and it has to go to the Federal Executive Council for approval before we move into throwing it open for interested parties,” Kachikwu said.

The OPEC member’s daily domestic refining capacity currently stands at 6 million litres while consumption is at 35million litres per day. “In the midst of this sort of statistics, it was absolutely critical that we move in to try to end importation of products, improve our refineries and get them up to 100 per cent,” the official added.

The West African country, last year, spent about $14.9 billion on the importation of petrol and other refined petroleum products. This amount represents 30% of the total foreign exchange distributed by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).

Anita Fatunji