India: Credit rating agency Fitch Ratings has forecast a 15% year-on-year decline in domestic cement demand in the 2021 financial year, which ends on 30 March 2021 due to “weak property demand and a sluggish construction cycle.” Fitch Ratings gave the reasons for the decline as “low consumer confidence caused by business uncertainty and unemployment concerns,” causing “underlying appetites of financial institutions to lend to the construction sector to remain weak” in spite of the Reserve Bank of India’s temporary funding relief measures to the sector, which include “loan restructuring, moratoriums and relaxed lending limits.”
Fitch Ratings reported that steel demand will also fall by 10% in the 2021 financial year.
