Over the first five months of this year, Tajikistan has reportedly nearly 620,000 tons of cement; average monthly cement exports amounted to 124,000 tons.
Meanwhile, average monthly cement exports in 2015 amounted to only some 42,000 tons.
In January-May this year, Tajikistan has reportedly exported cement to Uzbekistan (346,000 tons), Afghanistan (247,000 tons), and Kyrgyzstan (27,000 tons), according to the Ministry of Industry and New Technologies (MoINT).
Over the same five-month period, Tajikistan has produced cement more than 100,000 tons more than in the same period last year, an official source at a MoINT told Asia-Plus in an interview.
Tajikistan now has 18 cement plants with a total production capacity of about 5Mt/yr, with Huaxin Gayur Cement, Chzhungtsai Mohir Cement and Huaxin Gayur Sughd Cement accounting for more than 85 per cent of the overall volume of cement produced in the country over the first five months of this year.
The share of the Dushanbe cement plant (Tojik Cement) in the overall volume of cement produced in January-May this year was only 5.1 percent.
In 2018, Tajikistan exported 1.4 million tons of cement to neighboring countries, which was some 40 percent more than in 2017.
Last year, Tajikistan reportedly exported 810,000 tons of cement to Uzbekistan, 528,000 tons to Afghanistan and 87,000 tons to Kyrgyzstan.
Tajik-Chinese joint ventures Chzhungtsai Mohir Cement, Huaxin Gayur Cement and Huaxin Gayur Sughd Cement accounted for a total of some 96 percent the country’s cement exports in 2018.
Tajikistan has increased production of cement significantly in recent years due to launching new Tajik-Chinese joint ventures. Over the last eight years, production of cement has increased in Tajikistan nearly ten times.
Meanwhile, such achievements of Tajikistan’s industry evoke concern of ecologists, who consider that excessive increase in cement production may cause irreparable harm to the country’s environment.
According to them, more polluting plants in China are forced to shut down or pay the costs of environmental damage in the wake of new laws and a crackdown on pollution. Cement is one of the world’s most polluting industries, and therefore, Chinese producers have moved excess capacity offshore. The Chinese cement plants mainly use coal for their fuel. The companies reportedly claim that their plants are using advanced environmental and energy saving technology, without specifying exact standards.
