Kyrgyzstan Lacks Cement Amid Booming Construction
Kyrgyzstan is experiencing a cement shortage as new high-rise residential buildings and thousands of one- and two-story houses are being erected nationwide. This booming construction requires a large amount of cement, which has caused huge demand for the product. Local media quoted Syrgak Omorov, a representative of the Anti-monopoly Regulation Service, as saying that domestic producers are not capable of meeting the growing need. The Kant cement plant, the country’s largest cement producer, typically produces 600,000 tons of cement annually, but this year the production volume has already exceeded a million tons. According to Omorov, the Kant cement plant can produce up to 4,000 tons daily, but market demand is 5,000 tons. The official attributes the shortage to the unprecedented scale construction of housing and social facilities, such as schools. Earlier this month, the Chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers of the Kyrgyz Republic, Akylbek Japarov, announced that the number of new schools and residential buildings constructed in Kyrgyzstan has exceeded Soviet-era figures. Japarov cited data from the National Statistical Committee, saying that 1.560 million square meters of residential housing were built in Kyrgyzstan when it was part of the Soviet Union in 1990. In 2023, independent Kyrgyzstan constructed 1.587 million square meters of housing. The highest numbers of secondary schools were built in 1968 and 1987 — 50 in each of those years, while in 2023, Kyrgyzstan built 105 new schools. Last week, TCA reported that Kyrgyzstan is also suffering from a shortage of laborers, with the head of the construction agency in the Kyrgyz Republic stating that the construction industry alone urgently needs at least 10,000 workers.
