TANZANIA Portland Cement Company (TPCC) is envisaging impressive profit in the second half of this year to compensate for the income reduction in the first half of the year.
The Dar es Salaam based cement firm reported saw its net income dwindling by over one third to 19bn/- in the first six months that ended last June.
The poor results were attributed to unregulated imports mostly from Pakistan as well as power blues following the collapse of the manufacturer's electric transformer that cut the number of operational mills from five to three.
TPCC Managing Director Pascal Lesoinne has said that the new transformer is expected to arrive and be fixed any time and rescue the firm's generator dependence that has lasted for almost four months now.
"This (transformer installation) will reduce the costs incurred to run the generators," Mr Lesoinne said, expressing optimism that the second half will be better than the first.
He applauded the government's move against importation of untaxed cement that is selling cheaply in the market, subjecting the local manufacturers to unfair competition.
Industry and Trade Minister Abdallah Kigoda has already set up a team of experts to study the problems that cement manufacturers face before coming up with recommendations.
TPCC that trades on the Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange as Twiga last week launched the new product--Twiga Plus--that it described as being five times stronger than its predecessor, Twiga Extra.
The firm is expected to increase production capacity in the next two years by producing extra 700,000 tonnes. According to Tanzania Securities' weekly report, Twiga, despite posting profit decrease, it was the most active counter among the Industrial and Allied segment, trading 1,300,476 shares at 2,700/- each.
The current four cement manufacturers of Twiga, Simba, Rhino and Tembo brands have an installed annual capacity of 3.75 million tonnes although output is expected to reach 8.65 million tonnes by 2015.
