Construction will grow by 7% in Spain with the inflow of European funds and more construction.

Construction will grow by 7% in Spain with the inflow of European funds and more construction

The CNC warns of the lack of 700,000 workers to implement EU-funded projects by 2026.

This 2021 financial year, affected by the increase in raw materials, will be one of growth for the construction sector, according to estimates by the National Confederation of Construction (CNC). The expected boost is 7%, based on the projections of the European Federation of the Construction Industry. Euroconstruct, for its part, sees a development of 5.5% for the second semester and 6% in 2022.

The CNC expects the biggest pull to occur in building, with a 7.6% increase in production compared to 2020. In this case, the public boost to housing rehabilitation will be key, where a growth of 10.4% is expected compared to the previous year. For the new construction, an improvement of 8% is budgeted and the non-residential building will have an improvement of close to 5%. Civil works, on the other hand, would advance by 4.5%.

The employers emphasized this morning that the acceleration in the activation of the European funds of the Next Generation program would have helped higher growth. The group complains, for example, that the Autonomous Communities do not run to call for aid for 50 million for rehabilitation in municipalities with less than 5,000 inhabitants, whose Royal Decree was published on August 4, nor in the case of the 150 million destined for clean energy projects.

Potential to reach two million workers

The CNC has once again drawn attention to the lack of labor. According to his analysis of the situation, construction needs no less than 700,000 workers to meet the volume of projects that is coming in the heat of Community aid. The sector is involved, directly or indirectly, in seven out of ten euros coming from the EU, which should raise the number of employed from the current 1.3 million employees to about 2 million.

Regarding the aforementioned increase in the price of raw materials, the body chaired by Pedro Fernández Alén reiterates the need for measures to rebalance the current contracts in order to collect the alterations in prices after the award of the projects. To this end, the CNC demanded that the Government repeal the Deindexation Law.

The group of large construction companies, Seopan, also defended a rebalancing mechanism for works in progress and the restoration of the mandatory price revision in new construction specifications. And from the group of unlisted construction companies Anci, a reform of public procurement has been demanded to speed up the execution of projects and alleviate the problem of material prices.

Fernández Alén stressed that "employment in the construction sector is more than double the average in Spain. However, skilled labor is required since it not only represents a brake on the growth of one of the most decisive sectors for Spain's economic recovery, but could slow down the arrival of Community aid, which must be implemented at most, in 2026."