CIROM: About 20% of cement deliveries reach infrastructure projects

According to the preliminary data from the Association of Cement Industry and other mineral products (CIROM), the Romanian cement market decreased between 5% and 8% in 2013, compared to 2012. Thus, in terms of quantity, it remained under the level of 7 million tons. Although the official data from the National Statistics Institute (INS) are not yet available, the preliminary outlined decrease is more dramatic than the initial forecasts of the CIROM leaders. According to them, the latter was caused by the delay of the start of infrastructure projects and the lack of non-residential ones. Furthermore, the estimates of the officials are not positive neither in what concerns the activity in 2014. Thus, the cement industry will stay around 600-700 million EUR for the current year as well, the level being the average one recorded in 2011-2013. "Usually, in the election periods, due to the slight increase of funds available for investment, the cement consumption grows slightly by 1% -2%, mainly due to the works carried out by local authorities. It is hard to tell if this will happen in 2014 as well, because large infrastructure works are just in their early stages and we do not expect a positive impact during this year", said Mihai Rohan, the president of CIROM. Given the latest data available for the first ten months of 2013, a fairly large decrease of the level of new projects (-8.5%) can be observed, as well as a 28% increase in the capital repairs and about 17% for maintenance works. However, the analysis of the market by type of projects indicates an increase in the number of residential projects (15%), but a slight decrease in the engineering segment. "It is quite difficult to estimate the amount of cement delivered directly to the execution of infrastructure works, because manufacturers supply directly the cement contractors, who, in addition to infrastructure works, have other open sites. From our assessments, approximately 15% - 20% of the deliveries of cement are used in infrastructure works. We do not expect spectacular developments in 2014 in this area", said Mihai Rohan.