Construction

The Indian construction industry is set to expand at a compound annual growth rate of 4.16% from now to 2021, an improvement on the 3.95% annual growth recorded over the period 2012-2016.

Public and private residential building, investments in tourism and industry, and large-scale projects for Expo 2020 are driving the construction sector in the UAE.

The “100 mil Viviendas + Trabajo” programme launched by the Argentine government in March involves a partnership between the public sector, private building firms and banks.

This year the Indian economy has once again maintained growth levels above 7% and investments in infrastructure remain the main growth driver. The Indian government is expected to allocate 3-4% of the country’s GDP to infrastructure investments to ensure annual economic growth of between 7% and 8%.

In 2016 global construction investments reached a value of around 8 trillion euros. Read the interesting analysis by Francesco Doria, head of Mapei Research Department.

The North African construction sector has seen significant growth over the last 5 years and offers interesting opportunities for all players in the industry.

In January the International Monetary Fund (IMF) confirmed its growth forecasts for Algeria for the two-year period 2016- 2017 and predicted a fresh acceleration in 2021. The country’s GDP grew by 3.6% in 2016 and further 2.9% growth is forecast in 2017 (+3.4% in 2021).

Egypt closed fiscal 2015/2016 with GDP growth of between 3.6% and 4.0% in real terms. In the 30 months between April 2014 and October 2016, the Egyptian government made real estate investments valued at 43 billion Egyptian pounds (2.5 billion euros), compared to the 30 billion pounds invested in the last 20 years.

The Tunisian economy is expected to grow by 2.4% in 2017 (+1.6% in 2016) and to see steady improvement over following years to reach an annual growth rate of 4.5% by 2020. In particular, a number of large projects are under way in the construction sector, most notably the Tunis Financial Harbour, on which work began in late November 2016. 

The Moroccan construction industry is expected to grow between 2016 and 2020, driven mainly by investments in infrastructure, energy and new residential housing projects.

A number of new projects to be carried out in Tobruk, Tripoli, Benghazi, Sirte and Sebha, has been approved to start the reconstruction of the Country.

Strengthened by steady growth in the housing and construction markets, the U.S. economy continued to expand in 2016, helping lift the U.S. ceramic tile market to a seventh straight year of growth.

The downturn in the building sector continued also in 2016, affecting negatively production (-5.5%) and consumption (-10%) of ceramic tiles.

A report produced by BNC on behalf of the event The Big 5 reveals that investments of US $178.8 billion are in progress in 1,692 projects in this segment in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries.

This growth was driven by the Northern Italian regions with +22.3%, followed by Central and Southern Italy with +15.2% and +10% respectively.

For 2016 as a whole CRESME estimates total investments (including VAT) of 29.2 billion euros and 1.7 million applications.

While the Brazilian market is suffering the worst crisis in its history, Argentina, Mexico and Colombia are instead taking centre stage.

One of the sectors that is set to drive Iran's economy is construction, which closed at $154 billion at the end of 2016 and is expected to grow at an annual compound growth rate of 6.1% over the next four years to reach $196 billion in 2020.

The recovery in the Italian construction industry that began to emerge at the end of 2015 failed to live up to expectations in the first half of the current year.

According to the report published at the end of the 81st Euroconstruct Conference held in Dublin on June this year, construction output in 2016 is expected to improve by 2.6% and will continue to grow with the same pace in the period 2016-2018.