Pakistan's positive nine-month performance

The Pakistan cement industry has demonstrated a good performance in the first nine months of the current fiscal due in part to an acceleration of private sector construction activity, the commencement of work on mega housing schemes and projects across the country and the partial materialisation of budgeted Public Sector Development Programme projects.

Consequently, the cement industry saw growth of 7.19 per cent YoY over the July 2016-March 2017 period, and increased by 7.10 per cent in March 2017 alone.

In terms of output, Pakistan produced 27.78Mt of cement during 9MFY16-17, an increase of 7.19 per cent compared to the 25.91Mt manufactured in the period a year earlier. In March 2017 the industry produced 3.5Mt, up 7.1 per cent YoY, data from the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics showed.