Displaying items by tag: Government

Philippines: The Department of Trade and Industry has notified the World Trade Organisation (WTO) that it is starting a preliminary investigation to examine whether increased imports of cement is causing or threatening to cause serious injury to the local industry. The cement covered by the investigation is classified under AHTN Codes 2523.2990 and 2523.9000, according to the Manila Bulletin newspaper. The investigation will look at 2013 - 2017. The ministry has cited the Safeguards Measures Act as part of its probe.

Philippines: Cemex Holdings Philippines (CHP) is running an assessment to see how a local government order to stop mining operations in Naga will affect its business. APO Land & Quarry has been requested to stop quarrying operations in Naga City, Cebu following landslides, according to the Philippine Star newspaper. APO Land & Quarry supplies raw materials to CHP’s subsidiary Apo Cement, and it is indirectly 40% owned by Mexico’s Cemex.

Egypt: Medhat Istvanos, head of the cement division of the Chamber of Building Materials, affiliated to the Federation of Egyptian Industries, says that exports from the country are being made uncompetitive due to the government’s decision to raise energy prices in June 2018. He said that the local exchange rate had aided exports but that “the government’s bureaucracy has eliminated export hopes,” according to the Daily News Egypt newspaper. The local industry exported cement worth US$57m during the first half of 2018.

Istvanos said that the industry has a production capacity utilization rate of 60% with a production capacity of 84Mt/yr but consumption of only 54Mt/yr. He added that the decision to build the new 12Mt/yr Beni Suef cement plant was “not based on precise information” and that it had harmed local production.

Philippines: Trade Secretary Ramon M Lopez has started an investigation studying whether the government should protect the local cement industry, following a rise in imports. A review by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) found that imports grew by 70% year-on-year in 2014, 4391% in 2015; 549% in 2016 and 72% in 2017, according to the Business Mirror newspaper. However, the market share of imports grew from 0.02% in 2013 to 15% in 2017, leading to claims that increasing imports are damaging local production.

The review contends that the domestic industry's sales revenue increased from 2013 to 2016 but that it declined by 12% in 2017. Industry earnings fell in 2017 following growth. The DTI paper also claims that the cost of cement imports is around 14% lower than local product and that this has led to local producers dropping their prices by 10% to compete.

Eritrea/Ethiopia: High volumes of cement imports have been reported across the Ethiopian-Eritrean border following a normalisation of relations between the neighbouring countries. Since mid-September 2018 an estimated 50t/day of cement have been transported from Adigrat in Ethiopia to three border towns in Eritrea, according to business owners in Adigrat quoted by the Addis Fortune newspaper. “A minimum of 20 trucks carrying cement is leaving from Adigrat to Eritrea daily,” said Angesom Berhane, owner of a cement store in Adigrat.

Afghanistan/Iran: The Afghanistan Customs Department has banned imports of cement at the Farah border crossing from Iran’s South Khorasan Province. Mozaffar Alikhani, the Secretary-General of Iran-Afghanistan Chamber of Commerce, said that the ban had been implemented at the border point due to a lack of an online monitoring system, according to Eghtesadonline. The ban also includes oil products, steel products, tiles and ceramics.

Afghan officials have made contradictory statements about a ban of imported commodities from Iran. Ali Shariati, a member of Iran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture, told the ILNA news agency that the Afghanistan Customs Department had banned cement imports and those of other materials from 16 September 2018 to bring it into alignment with US sanctions on Iran. However, Alikhani dismissed this and said that the goods in question continue to be exported as usual from Iran to Afghanistan through the border crossings of Dogharoun in Khorasan Razavi Province and Nimrouz in Sistan-Baluchestan Province.

Sakhi Ahmad Peyman, the president of the Afghanistan Industrial Association, has also described the ban as temporary.

UK: The planning department of East Lothian Council in Scotland has granted planning permission to an upgrade of Tarmac’s Dunbar cement plant. The work will include building a new cement grinding mill, a new cement storage silo and a rail loading facility. The work will also include a shed, belt conveyors pneumatic pipelines and associated works.

In its supporting statement the company said that the new cement mill was necessary to produce new grades of cement required for modern construction and the cement market. The proposed mill will replace two existing mills on the site and is intended to be more energy efficient and quieter than the existing mills. It added that the plant would benefits from rail sidings on both the south and north side of the East Coast Mainline railway line. At present trains are fed only on the south side using adjacent silos where train capacity is already fully used. Additional products are exported by road.

Kyrgyzstan: Member of parliament Karamat Orozova has proposed setting up a commission to examine building a new cement plant in the Batken region. She has proposed allocating land and loans for local businesses to build a new unit, according to the Central Asia News Service. The politician has criticised the decision to place the South-Kyrgyz Cement (SKC) plant in the Osh region of the country given the neighbouring problems in Batken. The 1Mt/yr SKC plant was built in 2010 with Italcementi.

Egypt: The Ministry of Public Business Sector has shut down the National Company for Cement due to mounting losses. Hisham Tawfik, the Minister of Public Business, said that the plant’s losses had reached Euro43m in the last year, according to Egypt Today magazine. Its creditors include the Gas Company and the Egyptian Electricity Company.

The company’s registration with the local stock exchange was closed in August 2018. The government is now intending to sell its stocks in the Suez Cement Company and Al-Nahda Company. The company’s assets will then be sold. The minister said that workers aged 50 years or more will receive redundancy and that younger workers will be moved to other cement companies.

The cement producer reported mounting losses in recent years due to higher production costs. Reportedly, the cost of producing one ton of cement was 60% higher than the average comparable cost of its competitors. In addition the company was paying its workers twice the average wage than other state-owned businesses.

Russia/Ukraine: The Cabinet of Ministers has banned clinker imports from Russia. The government says that cement imports from Russia almost doubled in 2017, according to Interfax. Its share in total imports in 2017 was 85 - 87%, and in January - May 2018 it grew to 100%.

"The introduction of cement clinkers into the list of goods banned to import into Ukraine from Russia is carried out as part of the policy of economic opposition to discriminatory actions against Ukraine by the aggressor state," said the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade. It added the ban is expected to increase local production. Although a cement deficit is not expected, the ministry said that, if necessary, additional clinker could be imported from the European Union (EU).

According to the draft resolution, the ban on the import of Russian clinker will come into force 10 days after the publication of the document.