A continued decline in cement supply is seen in January having a 16.58 percent decrease is sales mostly owing to the cost of production and lack of containers for exports.
As per the information provided by the All Pakistan Cement Manufacturers Association (APCMA), the number of cement dispatches during January 2022 was 3.95 million tons against 4.73 million tons dispatched in the same month of the previous fiscal year. The cement dispatches are presenting a decreasing trend for the past few months.
During the month of January 2022, the local cement dispatches by the industry were found to be 3.4 million tons against 4.04 million tons in January 2021, displaying a decrease of 15.87 percent.
Moreover, exports dispatches agonized a massive failure by 20.71 percent after the reduction of volumes from 694,934 tons in January 2021 to 551,006 tons in January 2022.
Read more: Export and local sales of cement drops 4.1% to 27.456 million tons in first half of FY22
Besides this, north-based cement mills dispatched 2.707 million tons of cement in local markets in January 2022, presenting a decrease of 18.29 percent compared to 3.313 million tons dispatches in January 2021.
In January 2022, South-based mills dispatched 693,453 tons of cement in national markets which were 4.82 percent less than the dispatches of 728,568 tons in January 2021.
A 94.12 percent massive decline of exports from north based mills is seen after the quantities abridged from 233,404 tons in January 2021 to 13,727 tons in January 2022. However, exports from the south hiked by 16.41 percent to 537,279 tons in January 2022 from 461,530 tons in the same month the previous year.
Furthermore, APCMA said that in the first seven months of the present fiscal year, total cement dispatches both domestic and exports were 31.4 million tons, which computes to 5.89 percent less than 33.37 million tons dispatched in the equivalent period of last fiscal year.
Additionally, analysis specifies that local uptake of the commodity abridged by 0.69 percent to 27.465 million tons from 27.657 million tons in July-January 2021 while during July-January 2021, exports in the same period deteriorated by a huge 31.04 percent to 3.94 million tons from 5.71 million tons.
