BUA chief meets Tinubu, plans to reduce cement price from N5,500 to N3,500

The price of cement in Nigeria will drop from its current N5,500 to between N3,000 and N3,500, according to proposals made public by BUA Cement Plc.

Following a meeting with President Bola Tinubu at the State House in Abuja, the company’s chairman, Abdul Samad Rabiu, revealed this to journalists.

According to Rabiu, his company’s commitment to the Federal Government’s efforts to promote the stabilisation of the prices of critical commodities includes the price collapse.

This would, however, only occur after the commissioning of two new plants, each with an operating capacity of three million tonnes, which are scheduled to operate at the end of the year.

Rabiu said “Let me thank his excellency Mr. President for graciously receiving me today, I came to intimate his excellency on the affairs of our cement business.

“We have two new lines of 3 million tons each that we will be commissioning by the end of the year.

“So I explained to him that we want to support the efforts of the government in bringing down the cost of cement, by the time these lines are commissioned BUA Cement will be producing about 17 million tons per annum and with that, we intend to bring down the cost of cement from its current level of N5,000 or N5,500 per bag to maybe N3,000 to N3,500 per bag.”

He said the company could only do this because it is producing cement locally.

“Eighty per cent of the raw materials that we are using to produce cement in Nigeria are mainly limestone and gypsum and of course, energy is part of it. Of course, we have gas in Nigeria.

“So we want to support the government, we want to support their efforts in ensuring that the prices of these commodities are brought down incidentally.’’

He revealed that the two new plants to be inaugurated by Tinubu later in 2023 would increase production capacity to 17 million metric tons.