Credai urges TN government to reduce cement prices

Talking to reporters here, CREDAI (Chennai) president W S Habib said the ever evolving construction industry has been regularly seeing shifts in trends, especially when it comes to technologically advances in order to strongly focus on sustainability.

For the past few years, the construction industry has witnessed a rise in the cost of materials and unfortunately, the trend was sticking around, he said, adding that the hike in cement price has been affecting the sale of projects, especially in the low and middle-income housing group.

“The housing and real estate sector is the biggest demand driver of cement, accounting for about 65 per cent of the total consumption in India. The other major sectors pushing the demand were public infrastructure (20 per cent) and industrial development (15 per cent),” Habib said.

The price of a bag of cement in Tamil Nadu has increased 36-44 per cent recently, rising from Rs 250 to Rs 340-360.

While the increase was almost Rs 90 to Rs 110 in Tamil Nadu, it was sold for around Rs 320 and Rs 295 in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh respectively.

He also pointed out that about 30,000 constructions of various apartments, commercial structures, various houses and others were underway in Tamil Nadu.

Stating that projects worth more than Rs 10,000 crore was affected in Tamil Nadu alone, he sought the government’s intervention to take steps to reduce the cement price. “Failure to do so will affect the construction sector, the second largest employer in the country,” Habib added.