According to Reuters, Kenyan cement companies said they had been left out in the cold in a $3.8 billion railway project by China Road and Bridge Corporation, which had previously promised that all raw materials for the project would be sourced locally.
According to the CEO Pradeep Paunrana of ARM Cement, including Lafarge South Africa Kenya Plate and ARM Cement, five months after the project was launched, Kenya Railways, the executing agency of the railway project, was asked to provide a clear local procurement plan for China Road and Bridge Corporation. CRBC (China Road and Bridge Corporation) has imported 7,000 tons of cement since the beginning of the year, according to the Kenya Ports Authority.
Paunrana, CEO of ARM Cement and chairman of the Kenya Association of Manufacturers, said, "The project has promised that all the cement needed will be supplied by local suppliers. However, it is not transparent about the quantity that local suppliers need to supply. We do not understand why they still import cement when we can provide cement products according to the requirements of the project."
The Standard Gauge Railway Project (SGR) is Kenya's largest infrastructure investment since independence from Britain in 1963. The Export-Import Bank of China accounts for 90% of the investment in the project. After completion, the railway will connect Nairobi with Mombasa Island, the largest port in West Africa. The project is scheduled to be completed in 2017, and Kenya's Ministry of Finance has set a growth target of 7% for 2015, driven in part by the construction of 609 kilometers of railway links. In June 2015, Henry Totich, the head of the Ministry of Finance, allocated $1.46 billion for the construction of the project in 2015-2016.
The master list provided by CRBC to the Manufacturers Association shows that the total demand for cement for the SGT project is 1 million tons, all of which are provided by domestic enterprises in Kenya. According to Paunrana, the production cost of Kenyan cement enterprises is higher than that of China, and the import of products needed for the project is duty-free. Kenya Railways spokeswoman Mary Oyuke said the company had not imported cement because it was available in Kenya and ARM and Bamburi were already supplying cement for the project.
ARM and other cement companies, including Lafarge and Bamburi Cement, have upgraded their cement production facilities to produce 52.5 grade cement as required by the project.
As a result, the company added millions of dollars to its costs and believed that CRBC would buy cement products from domestic manufacturers in Kenya. "We have made significant investments in order to be able to supply cement for this project without interruption, including signing long-term agreements with transport companies." "We hope that the project will continue to use domestic cement instead of imported cement," Bamburi Cement CEO Bruno Pescheux said. In April 2015, Bamburi supplied 20,000 tons of cement for the project.
In the second week of July 2015, Kenyan cement manufacturers jointly protested against the import of Chinese cement for the SGR project. ARM Cement and Lafarge questioned Kenya Railways on why it imported cement for the project. However, in fact, Kenya's cement imports have shown a steady growth since 2012, with an increase of 2000 tons in 2013-2014.
Kenya produced 5.8 million tons of cement in 2014, up 16.3% from 2013, according to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics. Since the 1990s, Kenya's cement production has shown a steady growth. In 2011, the growth rate fluctuated slightly, but it soon returned to a high growth rate. In 2014, the consumption of cement increased by 21.8% compared with the same period last year, the import volume of cement also increased, and the export volume decreased.
浙公网安备33010802003254号