Thursday, March 14, 2013

14/03/2013: Irish Construction & Building Sector Activity 2012

Latest index for Irish Building and Construction Production volumes and value is out today, confirming what I wrote about on the foot of new planning permissions data (here), namely that Construction and Building sector continued to shrink in 2012 and there is little hope beyond some public spending projects uptick for the already devastated sector.

Top headline numbers for full year 2012 (these are imputed from Q1-Q4 2012 data):

  • Value index for all production activity in Building and Construction sector declined from 25.9 in 2011 to 24.7 in 2012 (using base of 2005=100). This means all activity in value terms has hit another historical low for the series and is running at less than 1/2 of the level of activity in 2000 when the index was reading 53.5.
  • 2012 was the sixth consecutive year of declines in the sector activity by value and volume. 
  • Peak sector activity was registered in 2006 with index reading of 109.7, which implies a decline from peak through 2012 of 77.5% in value terms.
  • Value sub-index for Building excluding Civil Engineering has dropped from 20.9 to 18.2 between 2011 and 2012 (decline of 12.8% y/y) and is down 83.2% on peak attained in 2006.
  • Residential Building value sub-index is down to 8.6 in 2012 from 10.2 in 2011, marking a decline of 92% on peak (2006).
  • Non-residential building sub-index for value is down to 55.2 from 61.7 in 2011 and is 53.9% below peak levels attained in 2008.
  • Civil engineering value sub-index was up in 2012 to 66.0 from 58.6 in 2011 (+12.6% y/y) but is down 49.3% on peak attained back in 2007. 
Similar story is traceable across the volume of production indices.

Charts to illustrate (note, charts are referencing a different base - instead of 2005=100 these have been rebased to 2000=100 for more clear compounded effect illustration):




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