Construction Activity July 2007

Well, the construction index was up 1.3% month on month, but that is about the only good thing which can be said about the latest set of construction activity data released by the statistics office.

In July 2007 the volume of the construction activity decreased by 13.7% according to unadjusted indices and by 14.6 according to ones adjusted by working days related to July 2006. In the first seven months the output was by 5.8% under level of the same period of 2006. In comparison with the previous month the production grew by 1.3%, according to indices adjusted seasonally and by working days.

Given that the drop was so substantial in June it is really quite hard to know how to interpret this data. It could, I suppose have been worse. We really need to see some more industrial output data and some more retail sales data before we can get a clearer indication of what Q3 GDP is going to look like.

Anyway, here are the charts: