Building permits value up 15% in nine months

Falling cement sales and rising unemployment in the construction sector suggest that construction in Cyprus is doing badly at present.
But the future appears already to be brighter, according to the forward-looking statistics of building permits.
The value of building permits has been rising for nine straight months. In February the value of building permits authorised rose by 26% to EUR 243.4 mln compared with February 2008. Moreover, the average increase over the past nine months has been 15.4% compared with the same period of the previous year.
In terms of area, building permits rose by 9.6% in February and on average 10.6% in the past nine months, while the number of dwellings authorised rose by 5.8% in February and by 29.1% in the past nine months.
Only the number of building permits authorised has been more erratic, but that is natural, since it reflects a mixture of multi-dwelling apartments and offices as well as single houses.

Fiona Mullen
www.sapientaeconomics.com