By Nneka Nwogwugwu
As a result of outcry of Nigerians concerning alarming increase of cement prices, Dangote Cement Plc has brought out measures to tame prices of cement.
Speaking to journalists on Monday, the Group Chief Commercial Officer, Dangote Industries Limited, Rabiu Umar, explained that development to market forces is a major cause of the increase.
He, however, informed that the company has taken a lot of measures to regulate cement prices.
Umar said, “As we all know with every other items, what drives the price is actually demand and supply. Now, as a business, Dangote has not increased price up till this point. Therefore, what has happened is that the forces of demand and supply have been the main driver of what people are talking about, the prices of cement going to extra amounts of money.
“The only way to deal with that is to make sure that you have adequate supply capacity because if you do not produce enough no matter what you do, there will be break in the supply chain and that will always create some opportunity for arbitraging. What we are trying to do is to make sure that we increase the supply of the product in the market.”
In addition to the supply side measures Umar also disclosed that the company is intervening in the transportation and distribution logistics to starve off possible cost sleeping into the pricing issue.
Also disclosing to the Vanguard, he said Dangote is injecting 2000 units of new trucks with some of them ordered from local truck manufacturers, the Anambra Motor Manufacturing Company, ANAMCO, in Enugu.