The price of cement on the home market continues to rise. The intermediary firms increased the price of a tonne of cement by about 1,000 lei, although the Rezina-based cement plant Lafarge Ciment SA did not raise the prices. Contacted by Info-Prim Neo, a number of Chisinau operators confirmed that they raised the price of cement from 1,500 to 2400-2500 lei a tonne. Some of them said they stopped selling cement for a while. The firm managers invoke a deficit on the market following the decision of the Rabnita Cement Plant to export all its products and not to sell cement on the Moldovan market as from January. The only distributor on the market is now Lafarge Ciment SA based in Rezina. Ruslan Ciorari, specialist at the Marketing Department of Lafarge Ciment SA, has told Info-Prim Neo that the company did not increase the selling price of cement for the economic entities that have direct contracts with the plant. The price of a tonne of packed cement is 1,530 lei, while of a tonne of cement in bulk – 1,440 lei. At the start of 2007, the Government reduced the profit margin on the sale of construction materials to 20%. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, the costs of construction services in the first quarter of 2008 rose by 20.3% on average compared with the corresponding period last year.