South African cement sales accelerated to a 17.8% YoY increase in April to 1.098Mt despite the disruption caused by many public holidays in the month after rising by 15.8% YoY in March, data supplied by the Cement and Concrete Institute showed.

This brought the increase in the first four months of 2007 to 16.5% YoY after last year’s 11.0% rise to a record 13.252Mt.

This followed a 11.6% gain in 2005, a 17.4% surge in 2004 and a 7.0% climb in 2003.

The monthly record of 1.288Mt was achieved in November 2006, but the March 2007 total of 1.279Mt was only slightly below that level.

The 2010 Soccer World Cup stadia, some new dams and the Gautrain project should add to cement demand in the current year.

An interesting observation is that three largely rural areas of the Border/Transkei, Northern Cape and Mpumalanga are above the industrial and

urban heartland province of Gauteng in the growth table.

For the first four months of 2007 compared with the same period in 2006, the percentage changes for the country and 11 regions were as follows:

Border/Transkei 29.0%;

Northern Cape 26.7%;

Mpumalanga 24.0%;

Gauteng 23.7%;

Limpopo 18.2%;

National 16.5%;

Northern KwaZulu-Natal 14.9%;

Free State 10.9%;

North West 10.8%;

Southern KwaZulu-Natal 10.7%;

Western Cape 2.1%;

Eastern Cape -1.7%.