LAHORE, Sept 4: An acute scarcity of adequate transportation facilities will hamper cement manufacturers’ efforts to export their products to India via inland route, an official of Maple Leaf has told Dawn.

“We (cement manufacturers) don’t have enough trucks to transport our cement even in the domestic market,” said Maple Leaf’s Rizwan Butt.

Maple Leaf is one of the two Pakistani cement manufacturing companies whose product has been cleared by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) for export to India after a detailed survey of their production facilities and product.

The other company is Lucky Cement, which is the first Pakistani cement producer to try to export its product to India in March. But its consignment of 5,000 tons was detained by the Indian authorities because of lack of BIS certification.

Both the companies claim to begin exporting their product to India by sea over the next one week.

“We have already ordered printing of paper bags in Hindi for the Indian market.”

Lucky Cement is selling its cement to Indians at a rate of $68-70 per ton (or 20 bags of 50kg each) and Maple Leaf at $76 per ton.

“There is unlimited demand for cement in India. But the problem is we just don’t have enough trucks to send our product across the border via Wagha,” said Mr Butt.

He said it will take a truck at least three days to cross the border, get customs clearance, offload the product and return home. That means we shall have less transport for delivery in the local market when we are exporting,” he said.

“A similar problem exists with cement export by train. The Pakistani train wagons do not meet the standard of the Indian authorities. Therefore, it will not be possible for the cement producers to use railway facility to export their product to the neighbouring country,” said an official of the All-Pakistan Cement Manufacturers Association (APCMA). He said the best way to send cement to India is to use trucks as each truck can take up to 10,000 tons across the border on a daily basis.

Another problem that the cement manufacturers are likely to face in exporting their product to India by road is absence of sheds on the India side.

“We have been told by government that both the countries have agreed to construct sheds on their respective sides to facilitate trade. But that facility is unlikely to be available before next month,” the APCMA official said.

A Lucky Cement official told Dawn from Karachi by telephone that his company intends to export 50,000 tons of cement per month and gradually increase the quantity to 150,000-200,000 tons over the next few months.

Pakistani cement manufacturers are trying hard to increase their exports in the region in view of their excess production capacity as compared to domestic requirements. The cement producers have already increased their capacity to 39 million tons a year against a local annual demand of around 24 million tons. Last year, they exported 3.2 million tons of cement to Afghanistan, Dubai, South Africa and Iraq.