According to a study realized in September by IBC Focus, most of the respondents (45%) forecast that the construction market will record growth starting with the second semester of 2010. Another great part of the respondents (30%) are more pessimistic and see a revival only starting with 2011.
The study was conducted in September 2009, on 184 marketing & sales managers and company administrators.
Logistics sector
will revive starting 2010, when demand for industrial space will be high again
and investors will, once again, focus on this profitable segment.
According to an analysis
realized recently by IBC Focus based on the data gathered from the Investment
Report, there were 196 logistic centers and warehouses recorded during January-October
2009. When finalized, all these will add approximately 350.000 sqm to the logistics
stock recorded at the end of 2008.
Therefore, if at the
end of 2008 newly built logistics space amounted to 880.000 sqm, at the end of
2009 it will reach approximately 1.230.000 sqm.
If in 2007-2008 the
trend was renting preponderantly large spaces, in 2009 small rents supported
logistics space market. According to the same analysis 75% of the logistics
projects recorded in the first 10 months of the year were small and medium
sized.
As future trend, IBC
Focus considers that investors will migrate towards other interesting parts of
the country, after having invested largely in the Bucuresti-Ilfov area in 2009.
Romania, placed 81 put of 102 countries in terms of
national branding
According to Country Brand Index Report Romania is under developed in terms of national brand; country’s profile is not distinct to other nationalities. This Report quantifies a country’s image according to 29 criteria, from history to business environment and economic situation.
Source: Country Brand Index
The country that ranks first in this year’s report is the USA followed by Canada, Australia, New Zeeland and France.
FDI – only 50% of the value recorded in 2008
Foreign Direct Investments in the first 9 months of this year dropped to 3.5 billion Euros, which represents 50% of the investment attracted in the previous year, according to National Bank of Romania.
Source: National Bank of Romania
According to an analysis conducted recently by IBC Focus Company, based on the construction projects recorded in www.raportuldeinvestitii.ro in November of this year, only 49% of the construction projects in the designing stage, auction or intention are active.
Regarding
the projects under construction or in the finishing stage, 90% are active and
only 10% are in stand-by at the moment.
State
investments – lead the top of stand-by future projects
According
to the aforementioned analysis, the segment with the largest number of future
projects in stand-by is Social and Community Construction projects, where most
of the developers are State institutions.
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.
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 3rd 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
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%).
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.
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
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
