President Umaru Yar’Adua, yesterday described the high cost of cement in the country as unacceptable and ordered the relevant authorities to take immediate action to not only force down the price, but also increase the quantity available for local use.
The Minister of Commerce and Industry, Chief Charles Ugwu made this known in Abuja when he addressed State House correspondents, saying the president was highly incensed by the development and had taken steps to reverse the trend.

As an immediate step, he said the president had directed massive importation of cement at affordable prices for a specified period of time as a way of making the commodity readily available and stabilizing the price.

“Aware and indeed outraged by this development, Mr. President has, therefore, decided to take measures aimed at drastically reducing the price of cement. Among them is the possibility of allowing the importation of cement at affordable prices for a specified period of time not exceeding six months, within which the price and availability would have been considerably stabilized,” he stated.
Asked what other measures government would take to bring down the price, he said much as he would not want to be pre-emptive, there was a plan to target the delivery of cement in key centres across the country to ensure uniformity in the price.

He recalled that government had early in the year granted provisional licenses to some stakeholders in the cement industry to import bulk cement for bagging in the country while retaining the ban on the importation of bagged cement in its desire to stimulate local production.
Unfortunately, while the decision, according to Ugwu, paid off with considerable investments in the cement industry, local operators could barely meet 6.5 metric tonnes out of the 18 million metric tones yearly local demand of the cement.

“This no doubt had led to the sharp rise in the price of cement from about N800.00 to N1,400 about the middle of last year and then to an unacceptable level of N2,200.00 presently. It was against this background and given the serious concern government has for the welfare of the citizenry that led to the decision to issue licenses to local operators to urgently import bulk cement to meet this shortfall.
“As it stand, it is very clear that local demand has far outstripped supply capacity, while local production capacity has not been able to keep pace with demand, hence the present unacceptable increase in cement price”, he further pointed out.

The minister who evaded the question on what price government was targeting, however called attention to the fact that the price of the commodity was between N800 and N1, 000 before mid last year when Yar’Adua came to power.

Saying it was unlikely that government would contemplate new channels in the massive importation of cement, he also added that “the responsibility of any government is to ordinary Nigerians.”