Portuguese construction sector calls for Government help

Cancelled public infrastructure
projects and a decline in sales of property in Portugal are causing significant
problems to the construction sector in the country, with leading firms calling
on the government for help.

Unemployment in the construction
industry is rising amid further concerns about the state of Portugal’s property
market.

Government cuts and fall in sales of property in Portugal hitting
construction sector hard

As part of the conditions of its
recent €78 billion bailout, the Portuguese government has cancelled several
large projects including motorway improvements, a new airport in the capital
Lisbon and a high speed rail link to Spain.

In a recent statement, the
Portuguese Federation of Construction and Public Works Industry (FEPICOPS) said
that “the sector is going through a deep crisis, with significant drops in
production and the number of firms and jobs it sustains.”

The organisation also blamed the
credit crunch which has prevented many thousands of residents and foreign
buyers from buying property in Portugal.

FEPICOPS said that unemployment
in the building sector has increased by around 14 per cent to nearly 71,000 in
the last year, accounting for 15 per cent of all jobless workers in Portugal.

According to the country’s
National Statistics Institute, construction orders in Portugal fell by 17 per
cent between the second quarters of 2010 and 2011 while licences for new homes
fell by almost a third in June 2011.

Another construction sector
association, AECOPS, warned that ‘uncertainty about the future is driving
builders out of business.’

Reuters reports that ‘while
hundreds of incomplete high-rise apartment blocks in the suburbs of Lisbon and
Porto illustrate the extent of the crisis, the construction firms say
recovering those cities’ long-decaying centres offer a growth opportunity, so
long as rental rules are made more flexible.’