Pakistan: Gharibwal Cement Ltd (GCL) has shown an impressive increase of 447% in net profit for the third quarter of the current Pakistan fiscal year, which covered the three months to 31 March 2013.

The company made a net profit of US$1.81m compared to just US$330,500 in the three months to 31 March 2012. Net sales of the company were up by 17% to US$18.0m compared to US$15.3m during the year-earlier period.

Muhammad Rafique Khan, director of the company, said, "During the current nine month period cement industry achieved overall net volumetric growth of 4.9%. However, domestic sales volumes increased by 6.2% whereas export decreased by 1.2%."

He said that GCL's improved performance was due to increased sales volumes, improvement in net retention prices and continued efforts of the management to control costs. All these factors over a period of nine months enabled the company to increase its sales volume and sales revenue by 20% and 34% respectively.

During the period company operated at 47% of its installed capacity, which is better than the 39% capacity utilisation seen in the comparative period of 2012, although still very low. Keeping in view the continuous growth of cement dispatches, restructuring by major banks and financial institutions, stable selling prices and tight cost controls by the management, the company says that it will be able to perform better in the future.