Kabir Rabiu, while reacting to the question on if ‘the BUA Cement price bonanza was actually delivered or not’ in ARISE News segment of the ‘MACRO ECONOMICS OF CEMENT PRICES’, within the wider state of the economy, said the price reduction was carried out from October 2nd, 2023 in line with the commitment of Alhaji Abdul-Samad Rabiu, Chairman of the BUA Group to ensure the accessibility and affordability of the product for Nigerians.
According to him, “Federal Government can only do so much, but without the support of the other producers and middlemen being called to order, the average Nigeria will suffer”.
He said: “BUA cement price reduction actually did happened. Our chairman made the commitment, and we actually fulfilled the commitment by running it for five months.
“We reduced our cement across our plant to N3500, but that was actually x-factory price.
“But, as you know industries such as cement in Nigeria, when we do this kind of commitment, we were expecting other players to come along because if you look at the industry where we are operating our market share of 30 -32% and for us to make this gestures, other players were not doing it, and turn out to be very difficult for it to be fully implemented.
“And so, we ran the programme for almost five months, and because other players did not follow suit the distributors and the middleman began to take advantage of our gesture.
So, what happened was that even though we were selling the cement at N3500 in order to support the economy and the users, there was no direct benefits at least to the end users because other players were selling at previous higher prices.
And with that it turn out to be increasingly difficult for us to continue, and whilst we were doing that the cost began to go up, and we were forced to change our position a little bit.
And while we were doing that we also discovered that some of our plants had some issues and that reduced production.
“We do not know whether it was by choice or it was a sort of maintenance, and so that put an enormous pressureon our cement supplies to meet the increasing demand and therefore, even widen the gap between what we were selling in the market xfactory and what the market was”.
It would be recall that Rabiu, Chairman of BUA Group, in conversation with State House Correspondents following a visit to President Bola Tinubu in Lagos last year, stressed that despite various challenges, BUA is determined to ensure the accessibility and affordability of the product for customers.
He said: “You know the price that we have set will be N3,500 per bag. You know x factory of course plus VAT and then delivered to customers depending on the region,”
As you know, the factories that we have; one is in Edo, the other one is in Sokoto state. So for example, if you want us to deliver cement to you from Sokoto say to Lagos from Adamawa or to Maiduguri, the distance is quite far. So dependent on the distance and dependent on the location. You know the price changes but we intend to keep that promise”
According to him, the cement company site in Sokoto that would be inaugurated by January 2024 is expected to further expand the market across the country.
“We anticipate a combined annual production volume of about six million tonnes from these sites, which we expect to significantly impact the market. While facing some challenges, we are actively working to address and resolve them,” Rabiu stated
