BEIJING, Apr. 21 -- China's cement output accrued a 12.92 percent increase year on year to 280.4919 million tons between January and March, still up 3.75 percentage points over Q1 2008, the latest National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed.
According to NBS, single monthly output for March was 122.0674 million tons, up 10.09 percent on year.

    Corresponding to the national rise, regional cement outputs, except East China, all bumped up last month. The post-quake Southeast output surged 36.2 percent on the year to 16.8034 million tons, due to intensive reconstruction.

    Cement output in eastern China down 2.96 percent to 44.6017 million in March. Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Shandong province and Shanghai all posted shrinkage due to weak demand.

    Industrial experts noted that the across the board production dip in eastern China was depressed significantly by the sick property industry there, in which governmental investment is the only source of demands.

    The pickup of the demand for cement did not bring the rise of cement price. The national cement prices were left hovering around costs at the end of March, showed NBS data.The demand-fed price rally earlier this month was a reasonable bottoming up, said analysts with Digital Cement, a cement information network in China, adding that there are no signs denoting a complete rise of price.

    The government-invested projects are at the early preparation period and have not directly consume cement and have not pulled up cement prices.

    (Source: chinamining.org)