Cemex CEO calls legal protections in Philippines weak

The head of Mexican cement giant Cemex SA (CX) complained Thursday about a recent tiff with the government of the Philippines, one of more than a dozen countries where the company operates.  On Aug. 12, the Philippines’ Department of Trade and Industry ordered Cemex unit Solid Cement Corp. to stop selling cement after its products failed government quality standard testing. The testing was conducted at the request of the Department of Public Works and Highways, which uses Solid Cement’s Island brand for its infrastructure projects.

"They never said where they got the samples. We had to shut the plant down for 15 days while they took new samples," Cemex chief executive Lorenzo Zambrano said at a conference of the Mexican Employers Confederation, known as Coparmex.  "This kind of lack of legal certainty doesn’t really make you want to do more business there," he added.  Solid Cement produces around 75,000 bags of cement daily, with each bag holding 40kg of cement. The company supplies around 9% of the cement used in the Philippines.