CEMENT makers are expecting a slight drop in demand for the product this year amid the slowdown of government’s infrastructure development projects.
“We’re still trying to quantify, but what we can say is there’s no increase this year. I think likely it’s a decline, we cannot say how much yet... [but maybe] single-digit,” Cement Manufacturers Association of the Philippines Inc. (CeMAP) president John Reinier Dizon told reporters late Monday.
“I think everyone knows what happened last year. All the [corruption] issues are government-based, [in the] Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH). [They’ve done] some cleaning [in the] organization, and they also got new people. But now they’re also stricter, [and] the budget was also reduced,” Dizon said.
The DPWH budget in the 2026 General Appropriations Act is P529.6 billion, lower than its proposed P880 billion.
“We hope to at least have a flat market (neither growing nor shrinking overall demand) next year, a preelection year,” Dizon said, adding that the government can help the industry by buying local rather than imported cement.
CeMAP will also ask the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) to consider imposing another safeguard duty on cement imports to cover other source countries and introduce a threshold system.
In 2025, the DTI enforced a temporary safeguard duty of P349 per metric ton on ordinary Portland cement type 1 and blended cement for three years to protect the local industry.
Year-on-year growth of the construction materials retail price index in the National Capital Region climbed 1.7 percent in April from 1.3 percent in March, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority.
Masonry materials, which include cement, registered a faster annual increase of 1.9 percent compared to the previous month’s 1.5 percent.
