Naveed Ahmad Khan
ISLAMABAD: The new fiscal has started well for the cement sector as the cement sale increased by a healthy 37.75 percent from 3.512 million tons in July 2019 to 4.838 million tons in July 2020 due to buoyancy in both exports and domestic market.
The growth looks heartwarming when seen in context of only 1.98 percent sale growth in 2019-20 that was totally supported by exports. The domestic cement utilization in fact registered a decline of 0.94 percent in the last fiscal. As per APCMA data, the local uptake of cement in July 2020 increased by 32.67 percent to 3.953 million tons from 2.979 million tons in July 2019 while exports registered a more impressive increase of 66.14 percent, increasing to 0.885 million tons from 0.533 million tons in same month last year.
The north zone as usual led total growth on the strength of its domestic market that grew by over 38.86 percent to 3.435 million tons compared to 2.474 million tons cement sale in last year July. The trend in exports from the north zone was highly disappointing as the total exports from north based mills amounted to only 0.123 million tons, a decline of 46.93 percent when compared with exports of 0.231 million tons in last year. The decline is due to trade standoff with India and slow construction activities in Afghanistan.
The performance of the south based mills that are situated near sea ports is quite the opposite. The South based mills could only sale 0.518 million tons of cement in domestic market, a nominal increase of 2.39 percent over sale of 0.506 million tons made in the same month last year. The south based mills however made up for slow growth in domestic market with a mind blowing growth of 152.97 percent in exports. Its exports of 0.762 million tons were 1.5 times the domestic sales of cement in Southern part of the country. Last year in July the cement exports from the South were only 0.301 million tons. The spokesman of APCMA said that the increase in cement sale last month gave boost to the industry. He said the increase in fuel and energy prices have badly impacted the freight cost and overall cost of production.
