JAKARTA (Yosefardi) – Domestic cement sales reached 13.6 million tons in the first quarter of 2015, down 3.3% from 14.07 million tons in the same period of 2014.
The decline was mainly due to the contrain of infrastructure and property projects. Other factors are the global economic poor development, the bearish commodity, and the high rains level.
In March 2015, domestic cement sales declined 5.6%. Cement sales in Nusa Tenggara dropped 28% to 226,000 tons last month. Cement sales in Kalimantan also fell 16% to 334,800 tons. Malaku and Papua also recorded 15.4% cement sales decline to 122,000 tons.
In Java, cement sales declined 6% to 2.56 million tons last month. While in Sumatera, cement sales grew by 4% to 1.03 million tons. In Sulawesi, cement sales also rose 6.9% to 365,000 tons.
For this year, national cement sales is expected to grow by 3.5% to 62 million tons.