Vietnam: The Vietnamese government will no longer provide guarantees to foreign loans for cement projects, as domestic supply has surpassed real demand, according to Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung.
Local cement producers have been facing huge difficulties, including huge losses and high inventory due to the low domestic demand. While domestic demand has remained modest, the annual cement output continues to increase, reaching 70Mt in 2013. Cement sales remained low at 61Mt. Domestic cement production capacity is forecast to rise to 77Mt/yr due to the commissioning of five new cement plants with a combined production capacity of 7Mt/yr.
The Vietnamese government earlier guaranteed foreign loans worth US$1.36bn for 16 state-owned cement companies, including Dong Banh, Thai Nguyen, Tam Diep and Hoang Mai companies. According to an audit report in 2012 from the Ministry of Finance on cement projects using loans with the government acting as underwriter, 10 cement projects resulted in losses and some of them could not repay their loans.
