Although the construction sector was particularly dynamic over the past year owing to engineering works on transport infrastructure which accelerated by virtue of European and national funds, the activity in other subsectors simply collapsed.
For instance, residential building has been in steady decline for the past 14 months. And the downward trend will continue since construction authorizations dropped over the first two months of the year (-5,7%) compared with the same period of last year. Fewer permits, fewer residential buildings construction works in the future:
only 4,385 building permits were issued nationally in the first two months of this year.
Usually January is indeed a month of diminishing volumes in terms of construction works, but the first month of this year brought on almost a halving compared to the previous month since residential buildings registered a decrease of 47%.
The significant increase of bank interest rates and the construction materials price spike after the energy crisis following the invasion of Ukraine by Russian troops are the underlying reasons of dropping demand for new housings.
The price of construction materials peaked in the summer of 2022 and showed signs of decrease thanks to energy price drops, but the beginning of 2024 represented a strong boost, prices going up over 31% compared with the reference year 2021.
Non-residential buildings also registered drops, although on a more subdued trend: in February 2024, given a decrease in authorizations of only 0.6% compared to the same period of last year, the total usable area of buildings diminished by over 20%, compared with February of 2023.
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