CEMENT Sales Volumes Rose by 6, 7% Year on Year to 2, 637-Million Tons

CEMENT sales volumes rose by 6, 7% year on year (y/y) to 2, 637-million tons in the first quarter of 2012, data released by the Cement and Concrete Institute (C&CI) on Monday showed. This compared with a 3, 3% rise in 2011 and a 7, 8% fall in 2010. Up until April this year, the C&CI reported monthly data a few days after the end of the month, but the institute can now only publish quarterly data more than 90 days after the end of the quarter, following a Competition Commission ruling. The Commission also only allows C&CI to report a national figure, not the regional or product detail. The detail would have given economists a clearer indication of the volume of cement sales going into the new power stations, mines, dams and residential buildings in rural areas, none of which is reported in Statistics SA s (Stats SA s) building plan data for larger municipalities. The real retail sales data released by Stats SA is equally deficient in geographic detail, because even though we know that real retail sales by retailers in hardware, paint and glass grew by 17, 6% y/y in November, we do not know what the growth rate was in Avondale or Zeerust, for example. The previously reported February 2012 data was merely the latest in a string of strong y/y cement sales increases. The increase in the prior five months (September to January) was 10, 5%, with the November 2011 tonnage at 1, 141-million, the highest monthly total since 2008. In his state of the nation address on February 9, President Jacob Zuma invited the nation to join government in a massive infrastructure development drive. We will use the project management expertise gained during the 2010 Fifa Soccer World Cup to make this project a success. The infrastructure plan will be driven and overseen by the presidential infrastructure co-ordinating commission, (PICC), which was established in September, bringing together ministers, premiers and metro mayors under the leadership of the president and the deputy president, the president said at the time. The PICC has identified and developed projects and infrastructure initiatives by state-owned enterprises and national, provincial and local government departments. These projects have been clustered, sequenced and prioritised into a pipeline of strategic integrated projects. Source: uaecement