By Isaac Aregbesola
China is investing additional $40 billion in Nigerian economy, its Foreign Affairs Minister, Mr Wang Yi, said on Wednesday at a bilateral meeting with his Nigerian counterpart, Mr Geoffrey Onyeama, in Abuja.
The Minister said China has already invested up to the tune of $45 billion in the Nigerian economy.
“ Nigeria and China are strategic partners; our relations have been developing well. China has already invested or financed a total number of $22billion projects here in Nigeria, another $23billion projects are on-going.
“In addition, we are also following up another over $40billion of investments which is in the pipeline.
“Compare with the size, population and market of our two countries, our cooperation still have large potential to be deepened,” he said.
According to him, in order to achieve further development and prosperity of the two countries, we need to strengthen our political mutual trust, deep complementary between our developments.
He stressed on the need to further expand practical cooperation and deepen strategic partnership between the two countries.
He expressed confidence that his visit would be a successful one and play a dual role in further strengthening the strategic partnership between China and Nigeria.
Yi said the purpose of his visit to Nigeria was to implement the important agreements and cooperation reached between the Chinese and Nigerian presidents.
He said the visit was also to help work closely with Nigeria to ensure that the outcome of the Forum for China Africa Cooperation summit are well implemented here in Nigeria.
Onyeama had earlier commended the existing relationship between Nigeria and China noting that the relationship had been strong for many years.
“I think the level of cooperation with China is extremely high and Chinese government is investing amount of money in Nigeria and probably is going up to $60 to $80 billion and we are extremely happy for that
He said that at the last meeting in South Africa and the government of China made available the total of $60 billon for Africa and a number of countries including Nigeria.
The Minister said that he would want to key in and see how much of that could be used to assist in the various projects that we have in this country.
He explained that President Muhammadu Buhari was in China in 2016 and had a discussion with Chinese Government on various cooperation.
“We know that in the area of infrastructure which is one of the priority areas and diversification the Programme of this government from oil .
“Chinese government has been showing a lot of cooperation with us in this area especially in the area of transportation,” he said
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the Minister of Transport, Mr Rotimi Amechi was part of the meeting.(NAN)
