According to working-day adjusted data, the annual growth of construction work in August was owing to an 11.1% increase in the volume of work done on buildings, while on other structures the volume of work decreased by 5.9%.
August was the tenth consecutive month that saw an annual increase in work on buildings, however, the favourable trend was not followed by construction activity on other structures, analysts of the Croatian Chamber of Commerce (HGK) said in their comment on the statistics.
According to original indices, in the first eight months of this year the volume of construction work increased by 3.1% compared to the same period of last year - on buildings it grew 9.9% and on other structures it dropped by 2.8%.
According to the structure of hours worked on construction sites, in August this year 45.4% of working hours was spent on buildings and 54.5% on other structures. Of the total number of hours worked, 54.9% was spent on new buildings and 45.1% on other types of work.
In the first eight months of this year, construction workers worked 46.8% of their working hours on buildings and 53.2% of their working hours on other structures. New structures accounted for 55.5% of working hours and other types of work for 44.5% of working hours.
HGK analysts said they expected construction activity to continue to grow in the coming months owing to the continuation of economic recovery and successful absorption of EU funds, as suggested by data on the number of issued building permits in the first eights months, which was 22.8% higher than in the same period of last year.