Economic review of cement industry in Iran and the world

The cement industry is considered one of the most important, fast-moving and influential industries in the industrial development and growth of any country. In the current research, the aim of more precisely knowing the cement market of Iran in order to achieve the goals of principle 44 of the constitution of Iran using analytical and quantitative methods, the economic situation of cement in various fields including its market structure in Iran and the world in the period of 2012-2018 has been investigated. The results obtained in Iran have shown that the cement production capacity has a growing trend and an excess of supply compared to demand. The countries of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Kuwait have been the most important target markets for Iran's cement exports so far. Determining the price of cement through the commodity exchange has removed the existing challenges. The cement industry is one of the energy-intensive industries, which has the largest consumption of fuel oil (furnace oil) among the different energies compared to all industries. the production companies in order to manage costs are mainly located in the border points and close to the production raw materials and they export their products to the nearest target market. The results of Herfindahl-Hirschman concentration index calculations, by information of 36 active companies and members of the stock exchange in Iran, showed that this industry has a monopolistic competition structure regardless of the ownership effect, and a multilateral monopoly structure in terms of the ownership effect. The structure of the export and import side of this industry in global markets also has a structure of monopolistic competition.