Queretaro, Qro. The behavior of inflation in construction materials could pressure and inhibit the development of construction projects, warns the Querétaro delegation of the Mexican Chamber of the Construction Industry (CMIC).
Some projects would be stopped due to the rise in material costs that is beginning to make projects more expensive, said the president of CMIC in the state, Óscar Hale Palacios.
Only from December 2021 to March of the current year, he explained, the price of structural steel rose 26.7%, that of diesel 26% and that of cement 9%, all of them elementary inputs for the industry.
Therefore, he called on the builders to make escalatory efforts (increases in budgeted costs) both with private clients and with public entities.
Despite this environment, he explained, the chamber projects that the industry in the state will reach double-digit growth, even higher than 10% during this year; a variation that would be above the national one, which has been set at 7 percent.
According to the Center for Economic Studies of the Construction Sector, from December 2020 to December 2021, the prices of construction materials accumulated an increase of 15.32 percent.
The asphalt had a variation of 71.2%, the metallic sheet of 58.1% and the metallic structure of 48.6%, among others.
Contribution to the state economy
However, Hale Palacios estimated that in 2021 the construction industry will have participated with 14.4% of the state GDP, a contribution that, he said, is not the result of the performance of this industry, but of the rest of the sectors that would have decreased.
At the end of March, construction provided 55,474 formal jobs in the state, almost 9% of the total registered with the IMSS.