daniel chigunwe
PRETORIA Portland Cement (PPC) Zimbabwe says it continues to play a significant role in uplifting the living standards of the country’s citizens in line with the objectives of Vision 2030.
Under Vision 2030, the country seeks to achieve an upper middle income society and underpinned by the National Development Strategy 1 (NDS 1), one of the critical pillars is infrastructure development.
NDS 1 is the Government’s five-year economic development programme that comes to an end next year and would be replaced by a similar blueprint — NDS 2 which will take the country to the aspired upper middle-income society. As a leading cement producer, PPC Zimbabwe plays a critical role in the country’s infrastructural development projects that include housing, road and dam construction.
Speaking at a Press conference in Harare recently, the company’s managing director Mr Albert Sigei said: “PPC Zimbabwe continues to play a pivotal role in the country as we pursue our mission of empowering people to experience a better quality of life while supporting the country in pursuit of Vision 2030 objectives.
“To this end, PPC Zimbabwe made a solid contribution by supplying more than 50 percent of the country’s cement requirements, including the supply to major infrastructure projects such as the Mbudzi interchange and the various dams and roads projects that were carried out by the Government.”
In the third quarter ended September 30, 2024, Mr Sigei said, his organisation, which presently produces 1,4 million tonnes of cement annually, managed to maintain sufficient supplies to the market with stock cover days being above 40 days for most of the period.
“This allowed us to complete our annual maintenance in September 2024 without affecting product supplies to the market.
“This has been made possible through the dedicated input of our staff and business partners to whom we are grateful,” he said.
At an industry level, Mr Sigei said the local cement manufacturers have more than sufficient installed cement grinding capacity to meet the country’s demand.
“Our installed capacity is just over three million tonnes versus annual demand estimated at about 1,8 million tonnes. Despite this, we have continued to witness a massive influx of imports into the country.
“We estimate that the country will unnecessarily lose over US$50 million of scarce foreign exchange annually if firm action to curb the imports is not taken. The imports enjoy an unfair playing field compared to local players, considering that importers have not made any investments, and this could ultimately lead to a slowing down of local manufacturing leading to job losses as cement grinding capacity utilization becomes low,” he said. — BH24
Bongani Ndlovu