A higher public sector investment programme is likely to keep the demand for cement in Pakistan on higher side and support bottomline growth of the local cement producers. Atif Malik, an analyst at Jahangir Siddiqui Capital Markets, said for the last couple of months the cement sector has been in the limelight due to continuous rise in cement prices which led the government to allow subsidized import of cement and withdraw its rebate on cement export.

In line with last year’s budget, we expect that the government will announce a number of infrastructure development projects such as enlarging the existing dams and resource availability for building new dams. The National Economic Council at its meeting held on previous Wednesday allocated Rs 132.5bn  for the infrastructure sector. Moreover, Rs 10bn  have been allocated for land acquisition for five mega dams.