Among the Member States for which Eurostat have data available for September 2008, construction activity rose in eight countries and fell in five. The largest increases were registered in Romania (+27.0%), Slovenia (+19.4%) and Bulgaria (+17.7%) and the largest decreases were registered in Spain (an incredible -24.1%) and Sweden (-19.8%).
Obviously September was a key month in the evolution of the Spanish crisis.
Month on month the most significant increases were registered in Slovakia (+7.2%), Portugal (+6.8%) and Bulgaria (+5.9%), while the largest decreases were recorded in the United Kingdom (-8.5%) and in Spain (-7.8%).
3 comments:
"construction activity rose in eight countries and fell in five" - this is a bit surprising for me, I have thought Europe has more serious troubles in the real estate business. However - decline in Spain or UK has a bit different impact than growth in Slovakia or Slovenia...
Thank you for interesting charts!
Jay
Hi Edwards,
Invaluable information. European eyes will now turn from South of Eurozone to Eastern Europe.
These figures tell another nightmarish set of stories to come. That problems will occur elsewhere in Europe is certainly not a consolation for anyone.
Hello again François,
"That problems will occur elsewhere in Europe is certainly not a consolation for anyone."
Definitely. I follow several of the CEE economies in detail and I can tell you the credit crunch is now biting in most of them, so while we are still seeing high year on year construction growth data, sales are now falling dramatically, as mortgages become much harder to get, especially fx denominated ones, which are now almost unavailable. So those CEE economies who aren't already in recession (which the Baltics and Hungary now are) will head towards much lower growth and/or recession as we progress through 2009.
Poland has only this week had to go to the ECB for help. From Bloomberg:
The National Bank of Poland secured a facility to borrow as much as 10 billion euros ($12.6 billion) from the European Central Bank to provide euro liquidity for the nation's lenders. Poland, which aims to adopt the euro in 2012, is the second east European country after Hungary to receive ECB support as risk aversion strained liquidity on the interbank market because of concern the region's biggest economy would be afflicted.
Post a Comment