The beauty of high cement, iron-bar prices

There is Portland cement. And there is mild steel. They are tough brothers.
Apart from Moses Golola, the irrepressible kick-boxer who takes being respected to a new level by eating ‘cement’ porridge for his breakfast, Portland cement and mild steel are mainly consumed by the construction industry.
Anyone who has ever been involved in construction on a modest scale (your nice little house in the suburban neighbourhood you could afford) cannot but marvel when they stand and gaze at 20-tonne trucks offloading iron bars and bags of cement at some of Kampala’s larger building sites. So huge are the quantities!
No wonder, when all these young upstarts appear on the scene to inspect one after another of their multi-floor building complexes taking shape in the urban jungle, many ordinary people suspect that some of the money involved may be the spoils amassed by movers and shakers of the vampire state.
When the production of cement and iron-bars goes down, and the prices in the hardware stores go up, it is mainly the tough, including the vampires, who keep buying.
Leviathan, the tax guzzler, is watching.
During the last two months, the price of cement has rapidly soared from around Shs29,500 to anywhere between Shs35,000 and Shs45,000 in different parts of the country.
The explanations given do not sound convincing. One cement manufacturer claimed that the (electric) power was not enough. The remarks of another producer suggested that the power supply was not clean, or smooth, or steady, or stable.
The electricity people roundly rejected the power shortage claim, adding that they in fact had a surplus of megawatts on the grid.
About the quality of the power supply, I would suppose that one of the important tasks of industrial electronics engineers and technicians was to apply their expertise and install (or design and install) systems that are specially tailored to ‘clean’ the power supply to industrial machines.
President Museveni has been singing non-stop about scientists and their magical role in moving the economy forward. If Tororo Cement or Hima have not heard this song, then they might as well ‘go home’.
Now, I hope I have not suggested that the limited supply and high prices of our construction materials might be part of a deliberate scheme. That is not even remotely my intention. However, as they say, there is no wind that blows no body no good.
By coincidence – I would say a very happy coincidence – the crisis has come just a month or two before the 2018/19 Budget is upon us.
You would think things were falling in place by design; but of course there is no conspiracy.
In any case, if I were the multiplier of taxes, and I had enough mischief to make those vampires building everywhere pay where they cannot dodge, I would seize the moment, even if I hurt ‘my’ small people in the process. I would add a few percentage points on every cut where I could, until the adjustments bring the pre-crisis cement retail price close to the crazy crisis figures; say, from Shs29,500 to Shs34,000.
You can see how I would crucify and at the same time bring relief to the consumer, if – a big if – if I could persuade, convince, cajole or force the producers to restore their output to pre-crisis capacity; or even maybe to increase their production.
When a consumer who had been paying between Shs35,000 and Shs45,000 during the crisis is required to pay only Shs340,000 after the Budget, would they not celebrate?