Indonesia: Indocement Tunggal Prakarsa, part of Germany's HeidelbergCement, has secured shareholder approval to pay 94% of the company's 2014 profits, about US$382m, as dividends. Indocement booked US$403m in profits in 2014, a 5.2% increase from US$383m in 2013. During 2014, its net revenues totalled US$1.47bn, an increase from US$1.43bn in 2013.

President director Christian Kartawijaya said that net revenues had dropped by 3.8% year-on-year to US$331m in the first quarter of 2015 due to a decline in demand. He said that he hoped sales would increase in the second quarter, during which the government was expected to begin major infrastructure projects. "The recent cement price cut by the government affected our business, but it was not so bad because we were also able to cut costs," said Kartawijaya.

President Joko Widodo instructed state-run Semen Indonesia to lower the price of cement in January 2015, a move that led to private cement companies lowering their selling prices to keep up with competition. Indocement lowered its average cement prices by 4%. However, it also reduced its operational costs, including energy costs, distribution and logistics costs to compensate the fall in prices.

According to Indocement, domestic cement consumption grew by 3.3% in 2014, slower than the 5.5% growth seen in 2014, as the election year led to the postponement of a number of projects. Kartawijaya predicted that the number would grow to 3.5% until the end of the second quarter of 2015. In 2014, Indonesia's cement oversupply was 7Mt. This is expected to rise to 15Mt in 2015. "The demand slowdown will continue until the end of the second quarter if the government does not begin large-scale infrastructure projects," said Kartawijaya. The Indonesia Cement Association (ASI) has predicted that the Indonesian cement industry would see an increase of 6% in 2015 due to the government's large-scale projects, including new toll roads, railways, deep seaports and water dams.

Indocement has allocated US$344m in capital expenditure (capex) for 2015, higher than last year's US$298m. The capex will be used to finish its new US$153m plant in Pati, Central Java, while the rest would be invested in its gas turbine projects. Kartawijaya said that the new plant in Pati would start operating in the fourth quarter of 2015 and is expected to have 4.4Mt/yr of cement production capacity, boosting the firm's annual capacity up to 25Mt/yr.