Cement industry despatched 33 million tons of cement in local markets during the financial year 2015-16 posting a robust growth of 17.01 percent compared with the local despatches during the same period of last financial year when these stood at 28.2 million tons.
Cement despatches to domestic markets during the month of June 2016, increased by 9.2 percent to 2.96 million tons compared to 2.71 million tons during same month last year. The comparatively lower growth in June 2016, was mainly due to the holy month of Ramazan as construction activities slowdown in Ramazan, said a monthly report released by the All Pakistan Cement Manufacturers Association on Saturday.
Exports during June 2016 were 387,060 tons against 552,867 tons during June 2015 showing massive decline of 30 percent. Total despatches during June 2016 were 3.35 million tons compared to 3.26 million tons during same month last year showing a marginal increase of 2.57 percent, mainly affected due to substantial downfall in exports, the report further added.
However during the financial year 2015-16, exports from the country massively declined by 18.38 percent to 5.87 million tons compared with exports during last fiscal year that were 7.2 million tons. Exports to India have increased by 42.53 percent to 992,631 tons during fiscal year 2015-16 against 696,417 tons during last fiscal.
However, the decline in exports to Afghanistan by 15.1 percent and via sea to other countries by 32.68 percent affected the overall exports of the country. Likewise, increased competition on global level coupled with economic slowdown in countries where Pakistan has been exporting reduced the country's exports by sea to 2.44 million tons during fiscal year 2015-16 compared to 3.62 million tons during last fiscal, data added.
Total despatches during fiscal year 2015-16 showed a growth of 9.82 percent compared to last fiscal year as the volume increased to 38.87 million tons against 35.34 million tons from July 2014 to June 2015.
Cement sector closed the financial year 2015-16 on a positive note. The only sour point was the additional tax imposed in budget 2016-17 that increased the cement price by Rs 35 per bag. Industry circles feared that additional excise duty imposed in federal budget 2016-17 might dampen the construction activities. They said that there was no need to increase the tax as cement is already the most heavily taxed commodity in Pakistan.
They apprehended that Iranian cement might make further inroads in Pakistani markets in view of lax border checks on smuggling and highly liberal attitude of authorities on under invoicing. Cement industry lost approximately one million tons of volume due to smuggled Irani cement coming into Balochistan and other coastal areas. This trend is going up despite several letters on this matter but no positive step to curb the smuggling issue has been taken by the government, they added. A spokesman of APCMA said that sharp decline in cement exports should be an eye opener for the policy makers of the country. APCMA's spokesperson appealed the government to support local manufacturers in winning back their markets by giving freight/ transportation subsidy enabling them to compete on global level.
Comments
Comments are closed.