The Governor of Kaduna State, Mr Nasir El Rufai said last week that the Chairman of Dangote Group; AlhajiAliko Dangote has teamed up with two northern Nigerian states to bid for a majority stake in Peugeot Automobile Nigeria (PAN) Limited.
Governor Nasir El-Rufai said the states of Kaduna and Kebbi, along with development lender Bank of Industry (BoI) and Dangote had submitted bids for the stake which AMCON, Nigeria’s state-backed “bad bank”, is looking for buyers.
The Kaduna State Governor said, “We have submitted bids for the carmaker with Aliko Dangote on board together with BoI, Kebbi and Kaduna State, we are confident our bid will sail through,”
El-Rufai did not provide further details. Bids for AMCON’s stake closed on January 26.
The billionaire Dangote Group is active in cement, oil, food and sugar business, and is also expanding into farming.
Peugeot’s executive vice president for Africa and the Middle-East, Jean-Christophe Quemard, had briefed President Muhammadu Buhari in November 2015, to discuss how to revive local production at PAN. Buhari is keen to promote a “Made in Nigeria” industrial policy.
PAN Nigeria Limited was set up in 1972 as a joint venture between the Nigerian government and France’s Peugeot, with an annual production of 90,000 cars by the 1980s.
But operations halted based on bad debt shortly after the government sold its stake to local core investors in 2006,
Meanwhile imported of fairly used second-hand vehicles from Asia and other Western Countries have made the Peugeot brand to suffer a major setback since the introduction of the policy under the Goodluck Jonathan administration
It would be recall that Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria, (AMCON) disclosed the state-owned “bad bank,” owns 79.3 percent of PAN Nigeria Limited, having bought the company’s debt and taken some as equity.
The Nigerian government has been pushing automakers to build cars locally, ordering local car distributors in 2014 to come up with plans for new assembly plants and threatening to impose prohibitive import duties.
U.S. carmaker Ford Motor Co (F.N) has partnered with a local car dealer to set up a 5,000 annual capacity assembly plant in Nigeria in November.
Ford Motor also said plans are afoot to produce 10 vehicles a day initially for the domestic market and then develop an export trade across West Africa.
Other automobile companies, Renault-Nissan, South Korea’s Kia Motors (000270.KS) and Germany’s Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE) have all announced plans to assemble vehicles in Africa’s biggest economy.
According to PAN’ website, the auto firm assembly plant located in Kaduna State, has Peugeot Citroen PEUP.PA as its technical partner with a capacity to assemble 240 cars a day,
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