THE country’s cement consumption is expected to grow beyond the average 6 percent to 7 percent during the past five years, to reach 12-percent annual growth by 2021 as the government’s wide-scale “Build, Build, Build” infrastructure program rolls out.
Trade Undersecretary for Industry Policy Ceferino S. Rodolfo told reporters consumption can reach around 46 million metric tons (MMT) by 2021, from the current estimated demand of 29 MMT.
This demand can balloon further to 72 MMT by 2025 with infrastructure projects in place.
“We have a baseline growth of 7 percent to 8 percent for the usual growth, but if infrastructure activities are in place, the growth in consumption can reach 12 percent,” he said.
This comes at the heels of Trade Secretary Ramon M. Lopez’s announcement two new players are expressing interest to set up cement plants, thus buttressing the local cement-manufacturing capacity.
“They’re just building up the feasibility studies. One of the plants will be in Cebu,” Lopez said, hinting one investment proponent is Filipino, and the other is Japanese.
Rodolfo said the investment per production line may range from $250 million to $600 million, but declined to bare the actual cost for either investment.
While the two projects are awaiting the 2017 Investments Priorities Plan (IPP) guidelines before registering, Rodolfo said the BOI wants to direct investments to build up the entire production chain.
“The demand for cement can’t be all supplied by local and that’s why we have a lot of imports now. The cement industry have been asking for incentives, and we’ve put that in the IPP so we won’t be relying so much on imports. It’ll be a waste if our ‘Build, Build, Build,’ will just be on imports,” Rodolfo said.