Indonesia cement consumption up in October as infrastructure project accelerates

Consumption of cement in Indonesia rose significantly in October as the Southeast Asia's biggest economy speeds up its massive infrastructure projects.

The Indonesian cement association reported that the consumption of the commodity scaled up by 10.7 percent to 6.37 million ton in October from a year earlier as the government speeds up spending on development budget, including for infrastructure, Mr. Widodo Santoso, chairman of the association disclosed on Wednesday.

The cumulative of the cement consumption by October also rose by 1.5 percent to 49.5 million tons from a year earlier, Mr. Santoso said.

"All the areas show a steep increase on consumption except Borneo," he said at his office.

Huge construction of smelting facilities of mining products also contributed to the rise of the cement consumption in the country, the chairman said.

On January 2014, the government banned the shipment of raw mining products to overseas and required miners to establish smelter at domestic, a move aiming at putting added value at the products.

For the whole of this year, cement consumption is expected at 63 million tons with the country's production capacity of 78 tonnes, according to the association.

President Joko Widodo who came into office on Oct. 20 aims to construct massive infrastructure projects to prop up GDP growth to over 7 percent at the end of his 5 year term, compared with 5.1 percent growth in 2014.

Indonesia's economy starts picking up at the third quarter to 4.73 percent as the development budget spending has commenced accelerating at the second quarter.

The growth had been the slowest in 6 years at the first half of 4.7 percent in part due to the slow of the budget spending,

The GDP growth is expected at 4,7 to 5.1 percent this year, according to the central bank. Enditem