There is currently a countrywide cement and stone shortage which government attributes to an infrastructural and construction boom that has seen high demand for the items since it took office last year, coupled the gradual reopening of the economy which saw a slowdown due to COVID-19.
“What is causing the shortage is the aggressive construction drive that is being pushed not only by the Ministry of Housing but in the national infrastructural development that is going on in the country. The suppliers will have to up their game and fill these orders,” Minister of Housing Susan Rodrigues told the Stabroek News.
“Things did slow down last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic but also now we have seen a return of the housing boom. Construction in the housing sector was on the decline in the last five years and I think a lot of the suppliers were caught by surprise; not only by the plans our government have, but how quickly we have been introducing the programmes since taking office last year,” Rodrigues said.
Local construction workers and contractors have bemoaned the shortages as they lamented that it has stalled a lot of their work. “No stone and no cement! I checked Gafoors and none. Went to Toolsie and still none. All over in town short and where you found it was overpriced and not in the amounts,” Campbellville contractor Omesh Jaundoo told this newspaper.
A recent East Bank of Demerara land owner said that works to his property had to be put on hold because he was not getting the amount of cement he needed to keep up a steady rate of work at his property.
Since last week, a number of hardware stores and stone suppliers have announced that they were out of cement and checks by the Stabroek News found that except for stone sold in small bags, there was no other supply.
Checks yesterday with Gafoors, National Hardware, Toolsie Persaud Limited and two Regent Street hardware suppliers showed that cement, mainly the TCL brand, was not in supply. Gafoors informed that it had the Turkish brand while National Hardware said it had Argos. Gafoors also said that while it had ¾ inch minus crushed stone, it could not say when it would get the ½ inch aggregate. Toolsie Persaud was out of both cement and stone. A company official could not say when it will have supplies but advised customers to “keep checking”.
Rodrigues said that government’s granting of additional quarry licences catered for increased supply as it had taken high demand into consideration.
“We are aware that suppliers are struggling at the moment to fill their orders and this is why government had granted additional quarry licences. And this is why we have ensured that we zero-rate the taxes on construction materials and so on.”
“Measures we have implemented makes it easy for people to build their home and projects and to also make it cheaper,” she added.
With the recent passage of the 2021 national budget, Minister of Public Works Juan Edghill says that demand will be even higher as more material would be needed to execute capital projects, worth billions of dollars, earmarked for this year.
He said he sees the shortage from a positive perspective since it was demonstrative that there was demand and in turn that means that the economy is “picking back up,” while showing that his PPP/C government was forging ahead with promises of accelerated development.
“It can be looked at as a good thing… because it has to do with the magnitude and accelerated pace of development in Guyana. This provides opportunities for suppliers and new entrants to the market. This should not be seen as a crisis,” he opined.
The Minister of Public Works informed that currently his ministry is overseeing the construction of 168 roads, which he pointed out are asphaltic and will all require stone. He said that in the hinterlands, government was also building concrete roads and to add to the demand for cement there are a number of oil and gas projects that will require the said materials.
However he was upbeat that plans are already on stream to solve the issue as he announced that stone is currently being imported from Suriname, Jamaica, and St Lucia.
“While there is a current perceived shortage it is not without the intervention. Sand is being exported and the same barge returns with stone. There is also a supply of stone out of Jamaica, one out of St. Lucia and the frequency and quantities will have to be increased to deal with the local demand,” he said.
“No doubt with COVID, things had slowed down but life is getting back to normal and we are getting back into that mode. With the 2021 budget now approved, definitely we will need larger quantities and we need to prepare for that. We have relaxed some of the taxation measures to allow for stone to come in from the Caribbean market. All of those interventions we did them, because we know that the rate of accelerated development we had planned would require greater volumes, that should being supplied to the Guyanese market,” Edghill stressed.
“We haven’t put all of our eggs into one basket…” he assured.
