Belarus will export a total of 130,000t of cement to Moscow this year, Prime Minister Syarhey Sidorski told reporters in Minsk on Friday.  
 
According to him, 90,000t has already been supplied.  
 
The premier noted that Belarus’ cement works would undergo serious modernisation in 2007, which would increase their annual output capacity by 500,000t.  
 
He said that apart from high-quality cement, Belarus supplies Moscow with crushed granite aggregate for road construction.  
 
On June 6, the Belarusian government established uniform price for retail sales of cement in the country in a move to stem the resale of cement for profiteering purposes, which was viewed as the main factor behind the acute shortage of cement throughout the country.  
 
Construction Minister Alyaksandr Selyaznyow said earlier that cement manufacturers would increase their output from 3.3Mt to 3.7Mt in 2007. "This would be enough to meet the domestic demand and to sell about 400,000t abroad," he said, noting that following their modernization, the Belarusian cement works will annually manufacture more than 6Mt by 2010, twice as much as in 2005.  
 
Although cement supplies to the consumers’ market have doubled this year, this has not made up for the shortage, the minister told the National Assembly in late May. According to him, an analysis made together with the police and prosecutors revealed that major buyers of cement were people who purchased it for resale.