Manufacturers of Cement disregard presidential order

The Cement New Entrant of Nigeria, CNEN, weekend, expressed disappointment at the disregard of the directive of President Goodluck Jonathan to cement manufacturers to crash the price of cement from 

N2,700 to N1, 000 per bag, saying that the current price of N2,200 at the expiration of the 30-day presidential order was meaningless.

Chairman of the group, Mr. David Iweta, said in a statement,  that instead of obeying the directive, “Cement manufacturers are flooding the market with imported cement instead of locally manufactured cement and secretly importing finished clinker for grinding in their local plants.”

He said, “Cement manufacturers are claiming that cement price has dropped by 25 per cent from N2, 700 to N2, 200 per bag, which is very temporal and cannot be sustained. Without deliberate decision of Mr. President to release pending licences and revert to five per cent duty, the price of cement will remain  high and unaffordable.”

According to him, “the N2, 200 price is too high. Cement was not this high during the government of the late Alhaji Umaru Yar’Adua, when he intervened by issuing  cement import licences to one company each from the six geo-political zones, which  stabilised the prices at N1,200 to N1,400 per bag at retail cement shops all over Nigeria from 2008 to 2011.

“Cement manufacturers promised Mr. President to crash the price within 30 days. From the above analysis, the only reduction average is N50 per bag.”

Is this what they understand as crashing”? he queried.

As a way out, he implored, Mr. President to approve and release the  five-year straight one  million tons per year cement import permit pending on his  table for Madewell Cement Jesse-Sapele, Reagan Cement EPZ Calabar, Wescom Cement – Lagos and Gateway Cement Ogun State and  reverse the 35 percent duty  imposed on an already expensive essential commodity to five per cent.

Further he said, “it is sad and shocking to discover that cement manufacturers hide under the cover of importation of complete 100 per cent manufactured clinker from foreign factories for grinding by deceiving Nigerians and government that they are rolling out cement from their local plants,  when they are surviving on clinker import through a less busy Port of Calabar, pretending to be importing wheat to divert attention of Nigerians and these companies do not pay duties on this product.”-Vanguard