Why cement prices are high — BUA boss

The Chairman of BUA Cement, AbdulSamad Rabiu, yesterday, said cement dealers frustrated his company’s plan to sell cement at N3,500 per bag last year.

Speaking at the 8th Annual General Meeting of the company in Abuja, Rabiu also said that while his company sold over a million tons of cement to dealers at N3, 500, per bag, with the intention that they would pass the benefits to end-users, the dealers sold a bag of cement to consumers at between N7000 and N8,000.

He said the company had to abandon the policy as its intervention was not to subsidise dealers.

According to him, BUA Cement could not stop the dealers whom he said made huge profits from the high margin because the company had no control over prices in the open market.

He added that the Naira devaluation last year and the fuel subsidy removal also played roles in making the policy unsustainable.

Rabiu stated: “So, a lot of the dealers took advantage of that policy. Rather than pass the low prices to the customers, they were selling at even double the price we sold to them.

“Some were selling at N7, 000 and 8 000 per bag. They made a lot of money with the very high margin. I think we had sold more than a million tons at N3,500 before we realised what the dealers were doing.

“And then, because of the issues that Nigeria faced at the time about devaluation of the Naira last year and the removal of fuel subsidy, we could not continue that policy.

“We wanted that price to stay at that level but dealers refused. So, we could not sustain that simply because we did not want to be in a situation where we are subsidizing dealers.

“I’m referring to the point when the foreign exchange rate moved from about N600 to maybe N1,800 to the US Dollar. So, it became even more challenging and more difficult for us to actually sustain that price policy.”

He said, however, that the company had continued to work towards making sure that prices did not escalate at levels of the percentage increase of the Naira devaluation.

His words, “If you see the exchange rate then, and the exchange rate today, you will see that cement is actually cheaper today than what it was last year, the reason being that if the dollar was up the costs go up by same margin and the price of cement should actually be, maybe, N10,000 Naira per bag.

The price of cement, if you take the N4,000 that it was in the beginning of last year, at 4,000 and today’s N6,000, it’s only 50% increase.

“So, we directly pushed to ensure that the price of cement is not getting higher than what it is today.

“But then again, you have areas where everything is dollar-dominated. Energy is the biggest cost. And our energy today is denominated in dollars. We buy gas to power our plants mainly. And gas is priced in dollars.”

The chairman revealed that one of BUA’s plants’ monthly invoice is about N15 billion or maybe N16 billion monthly. It used to be N3 or N4 billion. That is just one example.”

According to the financial report presented by the Board of the company, the company recorded a strong revenue growth of 27.4% rising to N460 billion against 2022 figure of N361 billion, resulting from its increasing market share.

However, with the devaluation of the Naira in June 2023, and its continued depreciation, as well as growing inflation, the Company experienced increasing price pressures which affected production costs, and consequently increasing the total cost by 39.5% to N276 billion as against 2022 figure of N197.9 billion.

Within this period under review, a net foreign exchange loss of N70 billion was recorded, with N52.5 billion attributed to finance costs.

Despite these challenges, the Company reported a net profit after tax of N69.5 billion and declared a N2 dividend per share.