Orascom to invest $200 million in Algeria

ALGIERS: Orascom Construction Industries (OCI) group plans to invest $200 million to build a new cement plant in Algeria, a senior manager said on Thursday. We are waiting for approval from the authorities to start building the plant, with a capacity of 1.5 million tons per year, Hocine Sadat, marketing director of OCI subsidiary Algerian Cement Company (ACC), told Reuters. The plant will be set up near Mascara town, some 360 km west of the capital Algiers. ACC already operates a cement plant with a production capacity of 4.0 million tons a year in the southern town of M sila. Local demand for cement is estimated at an annual 13 million tons, but it is expected to rise as Algeria s government plans to build 1 million apartments by 2009 to ease a housing shortage. The plan is part of an $80 billion five-year spending program aimed at boosting growth and upgrading infrastructure after more than a decade of civil strife that cost around $30 billion in damage. ACC said recently it was interested in buying some of the 11 state-owned cement plants the authorities plan to privatize. Reuters