Recently, the People's Bank of China and the National Bureau of Statistics released financial and economic data for February 2024. The observation and analysis of Cement Big Data Research Institute are as follows:
(1) Scale of social finance: In February 2024, the scale of social financing increased by 1.52 trillion yuan, an increase of 1.64 trillion yuan less than the same period last year, and the stock of social finance increased by 9.0% over the same period last year, a decrease of 0.5 percentage points over the previous value. In February, the issuance of local bonds slowed down, with government bond financing increasing by 601.1 billion yuan, an increase of 212.7 billion yuan less than the same period last year. From the credit side, new RMB loans amounted to 9773 yuan, an increase of 841.1 billion yuan less than the same period last year. Among them, residential loans decreased by 590.7 billion yuan, 798.8 billion yuan more than the same period last year, and short-term and medium-term and long-term demand showed weakness. Medium and long-term loans to enterprises and institutions increased by 1.29 trillion yuan, an increase of 180 billion yuan over the same period last year, and the effect of previous policies gradually emerged. In February, the increment of social finance was lower than market expectations, and the credit structure was partially improved.
(2) Cement output: The cement output from January to February 2024 was 18280 10,000 tons, representing a year-on-year decrease of 1.6%, or an increase of 0.9 percentage point from the previous value. According to the full-caliber calculation, the output of cement in January-February decreased by 7.9% year-on-year. In February, the domestic weather conditions were not good, coupled with the Lunar New Year, the downstream construction sites and mixing stations were mostly at a standstill, and the market demand was sluggish. At the same time, most of the northern regions are in the winter peak staggering stage, and the situation of production reduction and shutdown in southern provinces has also increased, and the supply is at a low level. Overall, from January to February, the cement market was weak in both supply and demand, and the market trend was still relatively weak.
(3) Market outlook: In March, as the weather warms up, the resumption rate of downstream projects will increase, but limited by capital factors, the actual construction volume will increase slowly, and the demand for cement is difficult to improve significantly. On the supply side, the cement clinker production line will end the off-peak shutdown, and the cement supply will increase slightly on a month-on-month basis. However, considering the slow recovery of actual demand, some enterprises expect to extend the shutdown time, and the cement output in March will still decrease on a year-on-year basis.
