Indian High Commissioner to Nigeria, Abhay Thakur, has said Nigeria can explore $5bn line of credit with low interest rate from India.
Thakur revealed this when he visited the Minister of Communications, Adebayo Shittu in Abuja on Monday.
He noted that the Prime Minister of India has made available to Africa $10bn credit line during India – Africa Forum Summit, of which only fifty per cent had been utilised.
Thakur explained 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,” he said.
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The High Commissioner also restated India’s moves to strengthen the bilateral relationship between both countries in the areas of human capacity development, e-government, industrialisation and Information and Communications Technology.
Responding, Shittu noted that India is one of the key partners of the country on many global issues.
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.”
Shittu also asked 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.