TEHRAN – The Chairman of the Cement Industry Employers Association (CIEA) has said domestic cement producers are completely ready to supply the cement required for the construction of one million housing units a year, IRNA reported.

“The annual construction of one million housing units in the country is equivalent to 75 million square meters of construction, and each square meter requires about four bags of cement,” Mohammadreza Salimian said in a press conference on Wednesday.

According to Salimian, constructing the mentioned housing units will eventually require 20 million tons of cement, and considering the country’s current production capacity which is about 85 million tons, there would be no problem for implementing this project in terms of cement supply.

At present, 65 million tons of the country’s total annual cement production is consumed domestically and 12 to 13 million tons are exported, the official said.

Earlier this month, Deputy Transport and Urban Development Minister Mahmoud Mahmoudzadeh announced that planning has been made and preparations have been done to start a project for constructing 1.3 million affordable housing units across the country.

Mentioning the plan for the construction of one million affordable housing units per year by the new government, Mahmoudzadeh said: “allocating land and financing are two important factors for the successful implementation of any housing project, and if these two are provided, building one million housing units per year will be easily possible.”

Referring to the recent rise in the prices of cement and steel as main items used in construction, he said: "The rise in the prices of cement and steel is one of the obstacles in housing production that the government must address; the government has provided all the necessary facilities including cheap energy for the cement and steel production units, but we see that such products are exported instead of being supplied to the domestic market.”

Mahmoudzadeh said the required regulations have been prepared and facilities have been created to provide land for the mentioned housing units by the next government.

“With the measures taken, the conditions are more favorable for the new government to begin the work,” he noted.

Iranian Transport and Urban Development Ministry is currently implementing a program called the National Housing Action Plan, which includes the construction of 400,000 small and medium-sized apartments (70-100 square meters in size) across the country and particularly in Tehran, where housing prices have risen most sharply.

The mentioned program is going to be pursued in a bigger scale by the new government which officially took office last week.

EF/MA