Europe’s construction forecast downgraded

The on-going Eurozone crisis and increasing fears of contagion have led Euroconstruct to downgrade its construction output forecasts for this year and next.

The forecasting group revised its prediction that Europe's construction output would drop 0.3% this year to a deeper fall of 2.1%. It also changed its forecast of 1.8% growth in construction output for 2013 to growth of 0.4%. The forecast for construction output in 2014 is for overall growth of 1.7%.

Euroconstruct predicted that the civil engineering sector would be the worst performing over the next three years, with an annual average rate of decline of 1.4%, while non-residential construction is expected to see an annual decline of 0.4% and the residential sector is forecast to see growth of 0.9% per year to 2014.

However, both the residential and non-residential sectors have seen much bigger falls (13% and 14% respectively) than the civil engineering one (-7%) between 2008 and 2011, and as such are recovering from a lower base.

Just two countries - Denmark and Norway - are projected to experience growth in excess of 2% per year on average between 2012 and 2014, while Austria, France, Germany, Hungary, Poland Slovakia, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK are expected to see modest growth of between 0.1% and 2% a year over the forecast period.

A group of five countries - Belgium, the Czech Republic, Finland, Italy and the Netherlands - likely to see no growth or moderate declines between now and 2014 (between 0% and -3% a year). Ireland, Portugal, and Spain will see construction activity remain in deep recession, with falls in construction output of up to 21.1% between now and 2014.