GlobalData forecasts decline in Europe’s construction output，GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company, forecasts that construction output across Eastern Europe will fall by 2% in 2020,Construction sectors in Western Europe have faced a difficult start to the year as the virus outbreak led to lockdowns and a subsequent slowdown in economic activity. There is a clear divide in the region between those most severely impacted by the virus outbreak, namely Spain, France, Italy and the UK, and those that will suffer a relatively mild contraction in 2020, such as Sweden, Germany and Austria.

Bangladesh: Production at Premier Cement’s new plants at Narayanganj and Chattogram has been delayed until November 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic. Mohammed Amirul Haque, managing director of the cement producer, said that the projects have been delayed due to the absence of some technical personnel from China and Denmark, according to the Daily Star newspaper. The units were originally scheduled to start commercial production in June 2020 but this is now expected to start in December 2020.

China: Gansu Qilianshan Cement has announced that it expects to record a profit of US$208m in the first nine months of 2020, up by 41% year-on-year from US$147m in the corresponding period of 2019, according to Reuters. It said the results would be in line with its growth trajectory thanks to a significant increase in demand towards the end of the first half of 2020.

China: Huaxin Cement has published a figure for its predicted profit for the first nine months of 2020 of US$135m, down by 44% from US$241m in the first nine months of 2019. The company attributed the forecasted decline “mainly to the severe impact of the coronavirus epidemic in the first half of 2020 and the large-scale flooding in the River Yangtze in July.” It added, “The production and sales of the company’s leading products were greatly affected, and prices also fell, resulting in operating income decline.” The company noted that third-quarter profit is expected to increase by 5% year-on-year.

Kazakhstan: Steppe Cement’s sales in the first nine months of 2020 were US$26.0m, up by 5% year-on-year from US$24.7m over the corresponding period of 2019. Dow Jones Institutional News has reported that cement sales volumes fell by 4% to 556,000t from 535,000t. Steppe Cement forecast full-year cement market growth of 2% to 9.0Mt in 2020 from 8.9Mt in 2019.