Romanian statistics

Private residential sector leads the top of construction sites in 2009

According to the data taken from the largest database with construction sites in Romania, www.raportuldeinvestitii.ro out of the 10.300 construciton sites recorded in the first 10 month of this year, 2.656 were projects under construction or in the finishing stage.

Out of these projects under construction, private residential projects counted for 26.3%, ranging first sector with the largest amount of sites under construction.

These numbers grounde IBC Focus’ predictions from April 2009, according to which this year there will be more dwellings finalized than the previous years, due to the large number of residential projects started in the boom year.

If previous years were characterized by large housing projects, this year a great part of these projects are in stand-by due to lack of financing. In exchange, medium and small projects continued their development, as you can see below:

Future sounds good for the food industry: 53 planned investments

Food industry seems to be among the few sectors protected by the economic recession. A study conducted by Prognosis in the first semester of 2009 shows that agriculture and food industry were the top industries for future investments in Romania.

This fact is emphasized by an internal study carried out by IBC Focus in July 2009 on the food industry in Romania, according to which this sector was the 3^rd most active in terms of industrial construction projects recorded in the Investment Report, with 16% from the total number of industrial projects verified by IBC Focus.

Moreover, the number of projects planned to be developed starting with the second half of this year represents 72.6% of the total number of investments in the local food industry.

Source: www.raportuldeinvestitii.ro and The Food Industry Investments Report

Romania: economic sentiment indicator recorded the greatest drop in the EU

The investors’ and consumers’ economic sentiment in Romania has been dropping continuously for 12 months, by September 2009. This indicator was downgraded especially by the construction sector. At the same time, the sentiment index in the EU has been increasing constantly for 6 months.

The index components are industry confidence (40% weight), services (30%), construction and retail (5% each) and the overall perception of consumers on the economic situation (20%).

Less jobs available in the construction market

If in July 2009 job offers in the construction sector used to weigh 11% from the total offer, in September it went below 10%, meaning less jobs available:

 

Most of the construction jobs available in September were for unqualified workers – meaning 146 available jobs.

Construction market loses 58.700 employees in 11 months

The segment that lost the largest number of employees is manufacturing industry with more than 180.500 employees off. In exchange, governmental agencies continued to hire more people  even if the Government keep menacing with firing about 20.000 from state agencies.

In the first 10 months of local economic recession (October 2008-July 2009) Romania recorded 315.000 unemployed persons which indicates fast speed in labour market contraction – 1000 persons fired/day.

Top cities with greatest number of unemployed persons in September 2009:

The only construction workers that are worse paid that Romanians are the southern neighbours:

Sources: IBC Focus, INS, Eurostat

Half of the retail projects announced in 2009 are under construction

Approximately 48% out of the 350 retail projects announced since the beginning of this year are under construction or in the finishing stage. The rest are in the intention, designing or auction stage.

According to an internal study conducted in september by IBC Focus, in the 9 months of 2009 there have been announced a total of 350 retail projects - showrooms, cash&carry, hypermarkets, do-it-yourself centres, supermarkets, stores, mall/shopping centres, etc.

Last year was extreme for the local retail market – 300.000 sqm delivered in the entire country, when internal consumption dropped drastically from the highs recorded in 2007 and S1 of 2008.

Still, the retail segment is still supported by the super/hypermarkets and do-it-yourself centres which countfor 65% of the retails projects recorded in september in the greatest database with cosntruction sites in Romania: www.raportuldeinvestitii.ro

Romania ranked 8th in Europe in terms of delivered retail space in S1 2009:

Sources: IBC Focus, Cushman&Wakefield