Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal trade (DPIIT), Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Government of India held consultation with representatives of Indian Cement Industry yesterday on the mechanism to collect cement production data ensuring 100% coverage of the industry.

Cement is one of the eight core industries in India. The Eight Core Industries comprise 40.27 percent of the weight of items included in the Index of Industrial Production (IIP). The cement production data is used by office of Economic Advisor, DPIIT to calculate the Index of Eight Core Industries in which weightage of Cement production is 5.37%.

Indian cement industry is second largest in the world with installed cement capacity of 600 million tonnes and production of 391 million tonnes of cement in 2022-23. Presently, the cement production data is collected by DPIIT through Cement Information System (CIS) portal. However, some plants are not providing data regularly.

Cement production data is used by government for policy decisions and for calculating the index of industrial production. He opined that robust and accurate data will benefit everyone including the cement industry in making informed decisions. This data is being relied upon by various agencies and investors also. He requested cement industry to ensure 100% coverage and regular submission of production data.

Join Secretary, DPIIT Shri Sanjiv informed that DPIIT is giving Ad-hoc permissions to cement plants as part of Ease of Doing Business, for manufacture and sale of cement without ISI mark for a period upto 150 days or till the plant gets BIS certification, whichever is earlier. In future registration in CIS portal will be a pre requisite for considering the proposal for grant of Ad-hoc permission. He also informed that the CIS portal is being revised and the modified CIS portal will be launched shortly. For updation of CIS portal, he directed National Council for Cement and Building Materials (NCCBM) to discuss with representatives of cement industry.

The representatives of cement industry assured DPIIT that the cement production data will be provided regularly and agreed that the accurate and authentic production data of the cement industry will be beneficial for all. The industry representatives also assured that remaining plants will be onboarded on CIS portal by 31^st March 2024.

The meeting was organised in hybrid mode on 09.02.2023. Besides, officers from NCCBM the meeting was attended by the representatives of Cement Manufacturing Association(CMA) and various cement companies namely, Saurashtra Cement Ltd.; Dalmia Cement (B) Ltd.; Shree Cement Ltd.; Adani Group; Star Cement Ltd; Jammu and Kashmir Cement Ltd. (JKCL); Heidelberg Cement; Orient Cement; Shree Cement; Nuvoco Vistas Corp; Zuari Cement Ltd.; My Home Industries Ltd.,  UltraTech Cement Ltd.,  The India Cement Ltd. and officials from Cement Section, DPIIT.

CIS registration requirement to qualify for ad-hoc permissions; industry urged to ensure complete, regular cement production reporting. DPIIT sought 100% coverage and regular submission of cement production data via the Cement Information System (CIS) portal, with industry assurances to provide authentic data and onboard remaining plants by the stated deadline. The Department announced that future ad-hoc permissions for manufacture and sale without ISI mark will require prior CIS registration, directed NCCBM to coordinate portal updates, and flagged an imminent revised CIS portal relaunch.