Cement Industry a relatively fast growing industry, is developing in pace with increasing building and construction activities. Cement has long been used as a bonding agent to unite particles or to cause one surface to adhere to another. The most common form of cement, portland cement, is a powder obtained from burning together a mixture of lime and clay, which when mixed with water and sand or gravel, turns into mortar or concrete. The amount of cement now annually consumed in the country is about 5 million metric tons. The production however, falls short by about 3 million tons per year. This shortage is met through imports. Per capita consumption of cement in the country (38 kg) is fairly low compared to India (89 kg), Indonesia (127kg), Malaysia (582 kg) and Thailand (642 kg).

Historically, Bangladesh did not depend much on cement. It also does not have enough natural resources for manufacturing it. The base materials traditionally used in house building and other construction required little use of cement. Gradual substitution of traditional building structures or patterns by modern high-rise ones has pushed up the use of cement. But as the economy continues to remain agrobased, construction sectors have not been able to gain momentum and as the infrastructure development is selective, cement remains a product of low demand. A faster growth in demand for cement has been observed only since mid-1980s, especially with implementation of large infrastructure projects, increased pace of urbanisation, construction of apartment buildings and multistoried shopping complexes in urban areas, and a shift in the taste of moneyed rural people for modern houses.

Private enterprises dominate production and import of cement to cater to the local market. The manufacturing of cement is based on both locally available raw materials and imported clinker. The two cement plants of the first type, one at chhatak and the other at Ayeenpur, have a total installed capacity of 260,000 tons a year. They produce cement from local limestone and use natural gas as fuel. The mills that produce cement from imported clinker are located mostly around dhaka, chittagong and mongla. There were 62 registered cement factories in the country in 1999, but only 13 of them were in production. The total installed production capacity of these factories is about 3.8 million tons a year. Their actual production, however, is much lower. A 50-kg bag of cement produced locally sells at Tk 250-260, while a bag of imported cement is priced at Tk 230-250. Local raw material based cement production depends on limestone deposits that lie in st martin's island, joypurhat and sylhet areas. The deposits in Sylhet support the production of Chhatak and Ayeenpur cement factories. These plants have the added advantage of being able to meet their needs for gas and clay from deposits close by. [Mushfiqur Rahman]