Optimism has returned to the builders – Newspaper Kommersant No. 23 (7468) dated 02/08/2023

At the end of 2022, business sentiment in the construction industry returned to the levels it was at the beginning of it. A review by the HSE ISSEK Center for Business Research notes that after the index of entrepreneurial confidence in the industry dropped to minus 12 in April-September, in the fourth quarter of 2022, the indicator returned to the value of the first quarter (minus 9). Despite the fact that the index remains in the negative zone (it has been there since 2009), this result was the most favorable since 2016. The recovery of the indicator at the end of the year is associated with an increase in optimism about employment in the sector and with an improvement in the estimates of the portfolio of orders. In general, according to the HSE, construction has turned out to be one of the most successful basic industries in terms of the level of adaptation to new challenges. Stroyka significantly increased its production activity, outpacing retail trade and the service sector in terms of the intensity of compensatory growth.

However, the situation in the industry is not uniform. The state of production construction, which depends on the orders of industrial enterprises that are forced to restructure production and logistics, as well as to optimize investments in the construction of new facilities, is assessed by experts only as “satisfactory”. The main contribution to the improvement of the business climate was made by housing construction, although positive trends in this segment also began to decline. If at the beginning of the year, according to the CCI, there was a “galloping growth” of the main operating indicators (demand, volume of orders and works, prices), then in the second quarter there was a slowdown. Then the situation turned around – the waves of rush demand, fueled by preferential mortgages, ended, and now there is an “obvious excess” of the rate of commissioning of objects over the pace of sales (despite a significant slowdown in commissioning at the end of the year). Recall that against the background of the commissioning of a record 102.7 million square meters. m (an increase of 11% by 2021), the apartment building market showed a slowdown during the second half of the year, and private construction – in the last two months of 2022 (see Kommersant of January 27). Taking into account the current uncertainty and the fact that the start of construction of the houses commissioned this year was largely laid down during the period of rush demand in 2020, HSE experts do not exclude a “pause” in the sector for one or two years.

Evgenia Kryuchkova