M.P. Shulgin State Road Research Institute and State Road Agency of Ukraine (Ukravtodor), within the framework of the national program, presented a project according to which the share of concrete roads in Ukraine will increase from 1 % to 5 % by 2025 as per Roman Skilsky, president of the cement producers association of Ukraine (Ukrcement). According to Skilsky, plans to increase the share of concrete roads in Ukraine give reason to hope for the growth of the cement industry.
At the beginning of 2020, a 20 % growth was expected in the construction industry, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic in January-July this year, the industry showed an overall decline of 4.6 %. Only infrastructure construction experienced a slight rise during the period.
Roman Skilsky sees a positive impact of the law “On the provision of construction products on the market" on the construction industry (adopted on September 2, 2020). The document introduces new rules in the field of state market supervision, which will significantly complicate the falsification of cement products.
The head of Ukrcement also hopes that the investigation of the import of cement and clinker from Turkey to Ukraine, launched in early September by the Interdepartmental Commission on International Trade, will contribute to the growth of the Ukrainian industry. Imports of Turkish cement to Ukraine in January-July 2020 increased 20 times compared to January-July 2019. He explained the growth of imports from Turkey by a sharp reduction in the domestic market of the importer itself, a significant weakening of the Turkish lira and advantageous positioning of the country in terms of logistics.
Roman Skilsky also noted that Ukrainian producers can easily substitute this volume of imported cement as it happened after the introduction of import duties for Belarusian and Moldovian clinker and cement, along with the ban of Russian cement products. Duties for all goods from Moldova (including cement) were set at 94.46 %, and duties for all goods from Belarus (including cement) were set at 57.03 %, which all in all boosted the demand for local cement products.
