The bill of Algeria’s import of building materials increased by 7% hitting $2.25 billion during the first eight months of 2014, against nearly $2.11 billion in the same period of last year, the Customs’ National Centre for Data Processing and Statistics told APS.
The imported quantities of the main building materials (cement, concrete reinforcing bars and wood) increased by 13.7%, reaching 7.1 million  tones between January and August 2014 against 6.3 million tones over the same period 2013.
By category of the products, the value of cement imports soared 31% with a bill of $373.5 million against $285.3 million in the same period last year, said CNIS provisional data.
the quantities of imported cement increased by nearly 28%, from 3.2 million tones up to 4 million tones.
CNIS said that the imports of wood increased by 20.4%, as the value of imports grew from $488.3 million to $588 million.
The imported quantities have totaled, during the first eight months of 2014 a volume of 1.03 million tones against 0.96 million tones in the same period of 2013, up by 7.8%.
Moreover and despite a 3% decline, the import bill of the reinforcing bars is the highest since it reached $1.29 billion $ against $1.33 billion in the same period in 2013, while the imported quantities have remained unchanged at 2.01 million tones.
In 2013, Algeria’s imports of building materials were down nearly 2% to $ $2.98 billion, despite an increase of over 20% of the quantities reaching 8.66 million tones.