Credai demands control on cement price

 Vijayawada: Expressing concern over the skyrocketing cement prices much to the detrimental to the real estate developers, the members of Confederation of Real Estate Developers Associations of India (CREDAI) YV Ramana Rao, state president of CREDAI alleged here on Thursday that all the cement companies in Andhra Pradesh formed a syndicate and hiking the price. Addressing newsmen, he said that the cement price has gone up by 40 per cent in the last one month.

“By forming a syndicate, they are announcing dispatch holidays and when they start the dispatch, they are hiking the prices without citing any reason,” he said.

Ramana Rao said that 60 per cent of the cement is used for the construction of houses and apartment blocks and the price hike is causing enormous burden on people as well as builders. The real estate developers who had already been facing severe problems are driven to the corner with the price hike, he said.

Pointing out that there has not been any hike in the price of other raw material, he said that the cement companies are hiking price by creating artificial shortage. If the construction sector suffers set back, the government would also suffer with the loss of revenue, he pointed out. 

He appealed to the government to take precautionary measures to prevent such catastrophe. Builder Sudhakar said that there is no alternative for cement for house construction and irresponsible price hike by cement companies is hitting the builders below the belt.

He recalled that when similar incident happened in the past, the government immediately formed a sub-committee to look into the matter and controlled the spiraling prices of cement.