He said this in an interview with on Wednesday in separate interviews with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) Lagos.
The chairman said that cement, the major building material in construction of houses, had gone out of reach of the common man.
According to him, cement constitutes about 40 per cent of the building material component with local consumption stands at about 19 million tonnes compared to the 9.6 million tonnes produced locally.
He called on government to crash the price of cement and liberalise the manufacture of the product in order to give more entrepreneurs opportunity to operate effectively in the building industry.
Umah emphasised need for the Federal Government to encourage more entrepreneurs into the production of cement, saying that incessant high cost of cement was due to few cement manufacturing plants available in the country.
He said, “With desire to address the nation’s housing deficit, the Federal Government must chart a way forward in that direction.
“This emphasises the need to crash the price of building materials, particularly cement, for government to achieve its desire.
“During the second quarter of 2015, a bag of cement sold for N1000 or N1100 but now, a bag of cement is N2, 800 or N2, 900 depending on the brand,” he said
Mr Olajugba Ogunbodede, Managing Director, Cross and Churchill Estates Ltd.,Lagos, urged the manufacturers of cement to ensure that raw materials used for the production were sourced locally, to minimise cost.
He said that procurement of local, raw materials formed the basis for the manufacture of cement.
According to him, the most important base materials in cement include limestone, clay or the naturally occurring mixture of the two, noting that no raw material used in cement production that cannot not be found within the country
Ogunbodede said that the desire to source such materials at home would also engender quality control measures not considered in the production of cement.
“A raw material policy must therefore create reliable framework conditions for sustainable supply of raw materials.
“This is the only way companies will obtain the planning and investment security required to continue to cover requirements for top-quality cement products in future, “he said.
Some other experts also called for check in the importation of most of the conventional building materials with huge duties and other levies associated with importation.
According to them, the development has resulted in the high cost of such materials. (NAN)
