Cement production slows down in China

Large cement enterprises in China produced a total of 504.04Mt of cement in the first seven months of this year, an increase of 17 percent over the same period last year.

Of this, output of cement in the first quarter was 180.30Mt, rising 23.8 percent year on year. But the growth of cement production has gone month-by-month downwards starting from May, with the growth reaching 17.1 percent in May, 13.2 percent in June, and 11 percent in July.

Cement output was 77.62Mt in July, 7.5 percent lower than that of the previous month.

Large industrial enterprises in China refer to State- owned enterprises and companies with sales exceeding 5 million yuan each year.

At the same time, inventory of the sector increased, and sales ratio dropped. The inventory of cement of the large industrial enterprises increased 11.1 percent to reach 42.296 million tons by the end of June, and the sales ratio stood at 98.5 percent.

However, the market prices of cement were stable. Since the beginning of this year, prices of cement kept on a steady growth to 2.2-4.45 percent as compared with the same period last year.