Kingston, Jamaica — 9 May 2024
The Cabinet has approved the importation of additional cement supplies after Caribbean Cement Company Limited, Jamaica’s sole domestic producer, encountered production setbacks caused by heavy rainfall affecting raw material supply and kiln expansion works disrupting operational output. The Ministry of Industry, Investment and Commerce arranged for a vessel to deliver an additional 28,400 tonnes to ease a shortage that had been tightening across the construction sector for months.
The cement shortage is not new, but it has worsened at precisely the wrong moment. Jamaica’s housing construction pipeline is running at its most ambitious pace in decades, with the NHT’s 15,009-unit commencement target for 2024/25, private sector vertical developments under way in Kingston, and GPP schemes active across multiple parishes. All of those projects require cement. All of them are now competing for a supply that the island’s single manufacturer cannot reliably sustain alone.
The Cost Dimension
The cement supply problem sits within a broader construction cost inflation story that has fundamentally repriced the economics of building in Jamaica over the past three years. Steel moved from approximately $95,000 per tonne at the start of 2021 to $139,000 during the same year’s peak. Construction ply went from $3,400 per sheet to over $5,700. The cumulative effect of those input cost increases, layered across every project in the pipeline, has been to push the per-unit cost of formal housing construction well above what NHT-eligible buyers can afford without supplementary finance.
The Caribbean Cement Company has been working on a US$40-million expansion of its production capacity by approximately 30 per cent, targeting completion by 2025. When that expansion comes on stream, it should ease the structural supply constraint that the island’s growing construction appetite is running up against. Until then, the gap between domestic production and peak construction demand will require managed imports as a bridge solution.
Single-Supplier Risk
The fact that Jamaica’s entire domestic cement production comes from one manufacturer is a structural vulnerability that becomes acutely visible in moments like this. When the Caribbean Cement Company faces production challenges, whether from weather, kiln issues, or raw material supply disruption, there is no domestic alternative. The entire construction sector waits, or buys expensively from imports.
This is not a criticism of the company, which has been expanding capacity and investing in its plant. It is an observation about the risk profile of single-supplier dependency in a sector as strategically important as construction. Jamaica’s housing ambitions require a construction supply chain that can absorb disruption without shutting down. The current architecture of that supply chain does not yet provide that resilience.
“Building material cost inflation has been the silent tax on Jamaica’s housing delivery for the past three years,” said Dean Jones, Managing Director of Jamaica Homes. “Every project that was costed in 2021 and is being built in 2024 is more expensive than planned. That cost is being absorbed somewhere, and often it’s being absorbed by the buyer, the developer’s margin, or the NHT’s capital budget. The cement shortage makes an already difficult situation harder.”
The Path Forward
The 28,400-tonne import shipment is a tourniquet, not a cure. The sustainable solution is the CCC’s capacity expansion reaching completion, supplemented by clear government policy on cement import protocols for periods of supply constraint. A sector as vital to Jamaica’s economic and social trajectory as residential construction cannot afford to have its most basic input subject to unmanaged shortage.
The government acted correctly in approving the import. The harder question is whether that kind of reactive intervention becomes standard infrastructure or whether the CCC expansion and import framework create the conditions for a more resilient supply environment before the next shortage arrives.
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