CE Barometer March 2008: Spring rally

Activity in the European construction sector edged ahead in March following the winter. Sentiment was weaker than a year ago, but remained in positive territory. Chris Sleight reports.

Construction activity picked up for the second month running in March, following a seasonal low in January. On balance, +9,2% of the respondents to last month's CE Barometer survey said activity picked-up compared to February. The balance figure is the percentage of respondents giving positive responses, minus the number giving negative answers.

March also saw sentiment about the future edge upwards. A balance of +25,7% of respondents said they thought activity levels would be higher in a year's time compared to the current situation.

As far as our ‘clock' is concerned, these results kept the arrow in the ‘Boom' segment, because both current sentiment and future expectations point to rising activity. However, the strength of that sentiment, represented by the length of the arrow is quite weak, as has been the case four the last four to five months.

Although there has been an improvement since February general sentiment about the industry remains quite low, albeit still positive. A measure of this is the ‘CE Climate', which is a balance figure for all the various positive and negative questionnaire responses. March's data put this at +19,5%. Again, it was a positive result, but at the same time it was a long way short of the high of +53% seen last April.

Take part

CE would like to thank all those that took part in the March survey. It was completed by more than 300 construction professionals in 28 countries around the region.

The survey, which takes just a one minute to complete - is open to all construction professionals working in Europe. Those that take part in the survey will be given access to each month's results on the Internet prior to their publication in CE.

The CE Barometer survey is open from the 1st to the 15th of each month on our website. Full information can be found at www.cebarometer.eu .