"Our commitment to sustainability remains solid" As we conduct our business, we continue to work to strengthen our commitment to sustainable development. To build on our success in the future, we must maximize the benefits and reduce the impacts of our business on our neighbors, our business partners, and the world at large. That is why we continually revise our sustainability strategy to consolidate our efforts across regions and further integrate our worldwide approach.

During 2008, our performance in relation to our global targets was largely positive.

• We increased our use of alternative fuels, up 35% from 2007.
• We reduced our CO₂ emissions per ton of cement, which puts us on track for a 25% cut by 2015.
• We mapped all of our quarry sites globally against areas of high biodiversity value in collaboration with BirdLife International.
• We registered two new biomass projects under the UN Clean Development Mechanism, which are expected to reduce our direct CO₂ emissions by over 120,000 tons per year.
• We achieved our lost-time injuries target two years early and set a tougher revised target for 2010.
• Around 90% of our cement and aggregates sites had plans in place for engaging our local communities.
• We continued to expand Patrimonio Hoy, our 10-year-old award-winning housing program for low-income families in Latin America. This program is now available in four countries and has benefited over 224,000 families with micro-credit, architectural advice and affordable building materials.
• We maintained our investment in our people’s professional growth, providing 21 hours of training on average to each employee and offering more than 600 courses online.

In 2008, we also improved our Sustainable Development Report by including a new public policy section; an assurance statement on CO₂ emissions and safety indicators by PricewaterhouseCoopers; and a greater amount of company-wide data. We also established a Sustainability Advisory Panel of global experts who will provide external feedback on how to continue improving our performance.

Challenges remain, and there is much more to do. Safety is our priority, so we must raise standards for our contractors and our employees. We will always stand by our goal to eliminate fatalities, and we are redoubling our efforts across the company to ensure our safety performance continues to improve.

Quick and effective responses are required to prevent irreversible climate change. We must identify and deploy more ways to cut greenhouse gases from our operations and develop products and provide services that promote sustainable construction.

We continue to collaborate with our industry to promote sustainable construction. A prime example is our work with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. We participated in the three-year Energy Efficiency in Buildings initiative up to the publication of its final report in April 2009. We are contributing to taskforce seven of the Cement Sustainability Initiative, which focuses on concrete recycling, and in 2008, we became chair of taskforce eight, which is investigating ways to maximize the sustainability attributes and benefits of concrete and related products.

By the end of 2009, we will be using the entire 250-megawatt output of one of the world’s largest private wind farms in Oaxaca to power a quarter of our Mexican business.

Climate change is also the theme of the latest in our series of conservation books, A Climate for Life: Meeting the Global Challenge. Published in partnership with Conservation International and the International League of Conservation Photographers, the book explores how tackling climate change through policy, technology, and innovation can help stimulate the global economy – a concept in which we strongly believe.

We are developing ways to lessen the impact of our quarrying operations on local communities and wildlife. Continuing our long commitment to conservation, December 2008 marked the end of the first 12 months of our 10-year partnership with BirdLife International. The partnership’s first major achievement was to map the proximity of all of CEMEX’s quarries around the world to areas of high biodiversity value. This will allow us to prioritize our actions and put in place effective plans to protect ecosystems around our sites.

Our commitment to sustainability remains solid. Despite the other challenges we face, I’m confident in our ability to become a more sustainable, profitable company. I invite you to learn more about how we are addressing sustainability issues on this website and in our latest Sustainable Development Report.

Sincerely,

Lorenzo H. Zambrano
Chairman of the Board and
Chief Executive Officer