Hanoi (VNS/VNA)– The domestic cement industry achieved impressive results in exports over thefirst eight months of this year to reach the target for the whole year.

In August, Vietnam gained a year-on-year increase of 44 percent in cementexport volume to 2.01 million tonnes, though the volume dropped slightly by90,000 tonnes against the volume in July.

During the first eight months of this year, cement exports reached 20.09million tonnes, exceeding the target of this whole year’s cement exports whichwas about 18-19 million tonnes, according to the Ministry of Construction’sBuilding Material Department.

The industry’s total cement consumption in both domestic and export marketsstood at 63.85 million tonnes in the first eight months, a year-on-yearincrease of 30 percent. Of which, domestic consumption reached 43.76 milliontonnes, a year on year surge of 3 percent, reported chinhphu.vn.

According to the department, the industry is likely to reach its targetconsumption of 65-66 million tonnes in the domestic market for the whole year.

Nguyen Quang Cung, Chairman of the Vietnam Cement Association, said that growthof cement consumption in the local market dropped from 2015. However, thecement industry expected a slight increase of 3 per cent for the year while theexports of cement would have better business results due to higher demand ofimporting cement from Vietnam to some markets like China and the Philippines.

In addition, over supply of cement in the future due to more projects andproduction lines coming into operation would force cement enterprises topromote cement exports, according to the association.

The Dau tu newspaper quoted Cung as saying that to deal with the situationof oversupply in cement, the association has proposed the Prime Minister directslackening investment into cement projects from now to 2025, while promotinginvestment in renovation and increasing productivity and quality.

In 2017, the industry put into operation three big production projects,including Long Son 2 Cement in Thanh Hoa province with a capacity of 2.3million tonnes per year; Thanh Thang Cement 2 in Ha Nam province with acapacity of 2.3 million tonnes per year; and Cement of Xuan Thanh 2 also in HaNam with an annual capacity of 4.5 million tonnes. Those projects raised thetotal designed capacity of the industry to 99 million tonnes.

This year, cement production capacity could reach 113 million tonnes.
Just three projects put into operation in 2017 have increased production by 9million tonnes in total designed capacity, thus increasing competitive pressureon the local market.

Meanwhile, the list of cement projects that are expected to come into operationafter 2018 are very large capacity projects, thus increasing the cementconsumption pressure.

They include the Song Lam Cement’s production lines 3, 4 in the second phase ofthe Vissai Group with total capacity of 3.8 million tonnes per year; Thai NguyenGroup’s Ha Tien Cement Project in Binh Phuoc with annual capacity of 4.5million tonnes; and Tan Thang Cement Project in Nghe An province with annualcapacity of 1.8 million tonnes.-VNS/VNA