The Ivorian government has taken urgent measures to deal with the shortage of cement in the domestic market.

   In recent years, with the launching of infrastructure projects in various fields, the market demand for cement has been rising. The proportion of cement demand for large-scale infrastructure projects in the total cement market increased from 3% in 2013 to 7% in 2014, and soared to 19% in the first quarter of 2015. The above increase in demand has objectively caused the current situation of insufficient market supply, but it also confirms the rapid development of the economy and the increase of government and private investment from the side. At the present stage, the cement production capacity is 2.9 million tons, with a year-on-year growth of 11.5%; while the cement market demand in the first three quarters of 2015 is as high as 1.5 million tons, with a year-on-year growth of 200%.

   At present, individual cement distributors hoard and take the opportunity to make huge profits, which seriously disrupts the cement market. To this end, the Cote d'Ivoire government has decided to take urgent measures to actively deal with this thorny problem. In the short term, the government will instruct the four major importers of SCA, SOCIMAT, CIMAF and SOCIM to urgently import 300,000 tons of cement in batches, and the government will exempt them from tariffs. It is expected that the first batch of 90000 tons import plan will be launched as soon as May, and the second and third batches of 105000 tons import plan will be implemented in June and July respectively.

   In addition, the government encourages existing cement producers to further expand their production capacity, adding 2.25 million tons to their existing production capacity to meet market demand. In order to solve this problem fundamentally, the Kuwaiti government will continue to attract domestic and foreign investment and actively set up cement plants in Kuwait. At present, four enterprises have expressed their willingness to enter, and some of them have obtained the land for building factories and are fulfilling the formalities for starting construction.