About two weeks ago, Mr. Vishnu Patel who is the Country Manager for Simba Cement was granted access to Entebbe State House where he met the President and cried out to him. Reliable sources say that Patel secured this audience with the Ugandan big man after getting numerous threats to his life from mostly business rivals who for some time have been angry with him for distorting market prices for cement. Whereas the others had gone as far as charging Shs40,000 per 50kg bag of cement, Patel’s Tororo-based plant has been producing and selling the same quantity of cement at Shs25,000 with a promise to lower it even further to Shs20,000. The Simba Cement plant only began production last month and the competitors are already having sleepless nights. Patel’s quality too has been rated far much better than any of his competitors and that is how the fair-minded businessman, who only began production in May, has been able to rapidly grow his market share to slightly over 15%. The entire industry annually produces and sells 6.8 metric tons of cement and of these, 44% is for Tororo Cement, 28% for Hima Cement and the rest share the remaining 13%. The Ugandan market consumes only 2.4metric tons of the 6.8 metric tons annually produced. This comes to 35% and the rest (65%) is exported to Eastern DRC, Rwanda, Kenya and South Sudan. Besides the big giants, the other actors in the cement business in Uganda include Sinoma Cement Factory, Kampala Cement and Simba Cement Company Uganda Ltd (SCUL). SCUL is wholly owned by the National Cement Company of Kenya and has so far invested $185m in the cement production activities in Tororo. Tororo has naturally attracted many cement investors because of its proximity to the limestone raw materials. SCUL is located 9kms along Tororo-Mbale highway and their plant is situated at Nyakesi village in Tororo district. President Museveni cheerfully welcomed Simba Cement because bosses of their parent company in Kenya assured him they would rapidly increase production and reduce the price and thereby enhance the real estate sector. SCUL’s coming on board made Museveni optimistic that more jobs were going to be created for the local residents over and above the 250 the competition had been employing. He anticipated that by end of this year, the different cement manufacturers would have created not less than 2,200 jobs for the Tororo residents. Currently, Tororo Cement has been producing 1.8m metric tons of cement annually which management has promised to grow to 3m with their newly opened new plant in Tororo. Hima Cement has been doing 800,000 metric tons annually and promises to double this to 1.6m tons with the newly installed capacity. The President, however, has been shocked to learn that some of the old players and their godfathers in politics and security have instead been sabotaging new player SCUL by making all sorts of threats on Mr. Vishnu Patel and his team. The saboteurs have gone as far as assuring Mr. Patel how they can use some rogue officers in Dr. Ben Manyindo’s Uganda National Bureau of Standards (UNBS) to maliciously close his plant in Tororo if he doesn’t stop undermining the industry long established exploitation of Ugandans by underpricing his cement. During the State House meeting, Museveni was reportedly shocked and offered to come out powerfully as the CEO of this country to ensure that Dr. Ben Manyindo doesn’t allow his agency’s name to be used by saboteurs to threaten the new investor.
Museveni is grateful that Patel’s entry into the industry has so far helped to expose the exploitative tendencies the other players had been engaged in. “How come you are selling at that lower price and you are profiting still? It means these shacks have been conniving with our people in government to rip off our people and this is not going to be accepted,” Museveni was quoted as re-assuring the SCUL delegation. “I will be coming to your factory in the month of August and I will denounce these thieves even more and publicly issue very strong directives,” Museveni reportedly said adding that he was tired of being betrayed by people who pretend to be patriots meaning well for the country whereas not. In a recent meeting with Finance Ministry officials, Patel said his target was to reduce the cement price to Shs20,000 per bag. At that time, Trade Minister Amelia Kyambadde was busy fighting other manufacturers with ultimatums to reduce the cement price but Patel assured government that within three months of his factory producing cement, the prices would go down and other competitors would have no choice but to follow suit. In the long term, Simba Cement management also plans to go into iron sheets manufacturing; which will further boost the construction sector by offering high quality low priced products. Before meeting the President, the lawyers had advised the Simba Cement investor to petition MPs who could react by summoning Dr. Manyindo to come and clarify on allegations that his entity was being used to blackmail the Simba Cement tycoon for offering Ugandans high quality and low-priced cement.For comments, call/text/whatsapp us on 0703164755.
