Fifty fully-laden cement trucks were turned back by Saudi authorities at the King Fahad Causeway on Wednesday.

They were stopped as Saudi Arabia stuck to the weekly 25,000-tonne cement quota for Bahrain, despite hopes it would be eased.

It will be Saturday before any new imports are allowed from Saudi Arabia, under the weekly quota rule.

'The situation is not happy and we are extremely concerned,' said Bahrain Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI) and Customs and Ports joint committee co-chairman Abdulhakim Shammery.

'We are taking up the matter with the authorities and we expect supplies to be back to normal soon.'

Shammery said the quota was leaving Bahrain short of cement since supplies restarted on June 14, after being repeatedly interrupted.

'The quota is being exhausted sooner and importers have to wait till the new week begins, every Saturday,' he said.

Shammery said there was chaos on the Saudi side of the border, with authorities taking a long time to clear the trucks into Bahrain.

'There was a line of trucks more than 5km long yesterday and it was getting longer.'

A shortage of document clearing agents on the Bahraini side exacerbates the problem, said Shammery.

Meanwhile, an official at one of Bahrain's major cement importing companies yesterday said they had been 'running out' of the quota since the supplies began on June 14.

'We were told unofficially that there would be no quota, but brakes have been applied for the second week running. We now have to wait until Saturday for the new week to begin,' he said.

The Gulf Daily News, our sister publication, had reported yesterday that Bahrain's construction industry was still reeling under the cement crisis, with supplies still too limited to meet demand.

Contractors and others said only 60 to 70 per cent of the industry's daily need of 8,000 to 10,000 tonnes was coming in at the moment.

They said the 25,000 tonnes per week was simply not enough to meet the demand for around 40,000 tonnes.

Cement supplies from Saudi Arabia were suspended earlier this month when rule changes had made it mandatory for importers to get complicated approvals from the capital, Riyadh.

The new rules were expected to be implemented from June 16, but the deadline was brought forward suddenly.-TradeArabia News Service