Segun Atanda/
A trade war is on in Kenya as Nigerian billionaire industrialist, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, floods the market with cheap cement.
Currently, Dangote cement retails at Sh7, 500 per tonne in Northern Kenya compared to Sh11, 000 from Kenyan manufacturers, a 31.8 per cent difference.
NewsmakersNG learnt that Dangote, Africa’s richest man, also intends to commission a cement manufacturing plant in Kenya by 2023.
Now, the local manufacturers see this development as a threat to their existence and they are up in arms condemning the imported product.
According to them, the government’s thirst for infrastructure projects sparked price and quality wars among cement manufacturers.
Devki Group chairperson, Narendra Raval, attributed the war to increasing inflow of substandard cement from regional firms. The group owns National Cement which produces Simba Cement. It controls 20 per cent of the market.
“Those importing to Kenya are not monitored. Their cement is substandard and below the normal 50 kilograms. This is killing the local industry,” Raval said in an interview with The Star Newspaper in Kenya. He questioned why the Kenya Bureau of Statistics and Kenya Association of Manufacturers are not taking action on the regional manufacturers.
“Most buildings are falling because they were constructed using substandard cement and Kebs is to blame for not effectively monitoring the price wars,” Raval said.
Distributors at Industrial area said they were selling a 50kg bag at between Sh600 and Sh650, down from Sh770 two years ago.
They said the low prices are raising fears of increased low quality cement entering the market among some builders. The prices per bag for distributors now retail between Sh500 and Sh650 for distributors and about Sh550 and Sh700 for retailers.
Raval said the entry of new players such as Dangote Cement is a big cause for worry since they sell cement at a much cheaper price than other East African manufacturers.
Some of the projects eyed by the cement manufacturers include the one-million-housing project by the government which is among the recently announced Big Four agenda. The standard gauge railway project, that is expected to connect Mombasa to Malaba on the border of Uganda, and the Lapsset corridor among others.
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