While the costs of construction materials in Romania rose during 2022, impacting the ability of developers to self-finance their projects, the current outlook is not pointing towards an improvement of this situation this year, according to an analysis by the Eastern European Construction Forecasting Association (EECFA).

The latest EBI Construction Activity Report, prepared by Eltinga, Buildecon, and iBuild, has found that after the weak Q3 2022, Q4 2022 saw a slight nominal expansion in activity-start in Hungarian construction. The value of started construction works was still very low; between October and December 2022 they totalled roughly HUF 650 billion.

Romanian private equity company Roca Investments has attracted RON 100 million (around €20 million) in new equity in a bid to expand its regional presence in the industry and agriculture field. The fund is also a controlling shareholder in key suppliers for the real estate industry. 

According to Michael Klien from WIFO (the Austrian Euroconstruct member institute), 2022 was the second year of recovery for the European construction industry after the outbreak of the pandemic. The year-on-year growth rates of 3% were, however, much lower than in 2021 (+5.8%) owing to the sharp rise in construction costs, Euroconstruct reports in its latest press release.

Obermeyer Helika, one of the largest Czech engineering and construction consulting companies, is expanding its management. In the second week of January, the company appointed Jiri Kos as its new Chief Commercial Officer. 

The volume of land sales for commercial real estate projects in Romania (excluding for traditional industrial and logistics projects) reached around €450 million in 2022, down from almost €800 million euros a year earlier, according to estimates by real estate consultancy Colliers. 

Slovak construction company HSF System SK has completed the general delivery of two more shopping centres in Slovakia. In Kysucke Nové Mesto, which is located in the Žilina region, the shopping gallery Obchodná galéria Naša was opened to the public. In Košice, a new SIKO shopping centre was built.

Negotiators of the Council and the European Parliament reached an agreement aimed at taxing imports based on the greenhouse gas emissions needed to make the products, which would extensively cover the imports of construction materials. 

The EECFA 2022 Winter Construction Forecast Report has been released and yet another downward revision characterizes the forecast for both Southeast Europe and Eastern Europe. Southeast Europe could see shrinkage on the horizon. This, however, comes after a great period of construction between 2016 and 2021, so the market is foreseen to come down from a peak level. In this respect, the 3% decline until 2024 is no drama, in EECFA’s view. The drama is in East Europe where the peak was reached in 2018 and the market was around 10% below that peak level even before the Ukraine war began. Since then, EECFA has paused issuing forecasts in Ukraine and a status report has been prepared. Without Ukraine, the region is expected to reach its bottom in 2023.

Angelika Cieślowska, President of the Management Board of KB DORACO, one of the largest Polish construction companies, talked to Property Forum about the impact of the war in Ukraine on the construction industry, high prices of energy and raw materials and the possible scenarios of market development.