Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, has said that the management of his Dangote Sugar Refinery Plc has to pull all the stops to pay dividends to shareholders attributing the challenge to the naira devaluation.
Dangote remarked this in his capacity as the Chairman of Dangote Industries Limited during the annual general meeting of Dangote Sugar Refinery Plc.
The billionaire businessman in his statement, stated that 2023 was a difficult time for businesses due to the time being an election year with a new government in place.
He added that the incumbent government’s naira devaluation policy further constrained and eroded the profitability of businesses resulting in the inability of most quoted companies to pay dividends.
According to him, “We are doing whatever it takes to make sure that at the end of the day, we will be paying dividends because if you look at our dividends last year, it was almost 50 percent more so we will try and get out of the mess.
“The biggest mess created was actually the devaluation of the naira from N460 to N1,400. You can see almost 97 percent of the companies, especially in food and beverages businesses, none of them will pay dividends this year for sure but, we will try and get out of it as soon as possible.
“We want to see that at the end of the day, no matter how small, we will be able to pay some dividends, especially if there is a rebound of the naira.”
He went on to announce his companies’ loss of N164 billion FX due to the worsening economic situation of the country notably from the devaluation of Naira.
