Business Report writes that according to David Metelerkamp, senior economist at Industry Insight, the civil construction sector was in recession and needed to go into “survival mode”.
Metelerkamp said on Wednesday that the overall construction sector had slumped consistently over the past two to three years and had shown consistent negative growth of between 1.1% and 1.4% in terms of gross domestic product. There had also been a 26.6% decrease in the nominal total value of civil tenders awarded over the past year, compared to the previous year, and an about 80% increase in postponements of civil projects. “It’s going to be tough this year. This year is probably going to be the worst year for the civil sector, and we expect it to improve next year and the following year. This year is just survival mode,” Metelerkamp stated. He added that the building sector was looking better than the civil sector. But he questioned whether there were possibly too many listed construction companies in SA, adding that SA had nine listed construction companies compared to only three in China, two in Brazil, five in Turkey and four in Australia.
- Read this report by Roy Cokayne in full at Business Report
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