Zubair Qureshi
Islamabad
With the start of the new fiscal year, the cement sector has registered an increase 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 dispatch 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.
According to the data released by APCMA, 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 the total growth on the strength of its domestic market that grew by over 38.86 percent to 3.435 million tons compared with 2.474 million tons cement despatches 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 dispatch 0.518 million tons of cement in the domestic market, a nominal increase of 2.39 percent over the dispatches of 0.506 million tons made in the same month last year.
