Cement manufacturer Pretoria Portland Cement (PPC) Zimbabwe has said the cement manufacturing sector has enough production capacity to meet the demands of the country.
Speaking while briefing the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Industry and Commerce this Wednesday which was visiting their offices in Bulawayo, PPC Zimbabwe Managing Director Kelibone Masiyane said:
As the cement manufacturing industry, we do have enough capacity to meet the demands of the country.
We however some time last year had an unfortunate incident where Lafarge cement had an accident that led to the closure of the plant while we were also having major maintenance works.
Hence we had two major players down leading to a shortage. However, as the cement industry, we have the capacity.
The visit by the committee was part of its fact-finding visits to cement manufacturing industries.
The chairperson of the committee, Joshua Sacco (ZANU PF), explained the reasons for the fact-finding visit. He said:
The main reason for our visit is to look at the capacity as in do we as a country have the capacity to produce cement as you know there is a lot of construction being done around the country.
There is a perception that we do not have enough cement in the country so as a committee we have been looking at this to say do we have enough capacity to produce as Zimbabwe. We are looking at pricing as well as quality issues.
We have come across a number of issues that we feel the government should address and come on board.
We are very happy to report that Lafarge they have received support from the government, and they have installed a vertical mill.
PPC has also received support from the government in establishing a milling plant in Harare. So we see that there is close interaction between government and business.
However, there is a need to look into revamping the National Railways of Zimbabwe to reduce the cost of logistics.
Issues of energy supply are some of the issues we came across. Hence we will engage the relevant authorities