Construction costs up 1.9% in January

The costs of new build construction in Portugal went up 1.9% overall in January like-for-like on 2022.

This percentage represents an increase of 1.2% on December 2023 while the price of building materials and labour costs displayed like for like variations of 10.1% and 6.4% respectively.
The statistics were published in the New Housing Construction Costs Index (ICCHN) released by the Portuguese statistics institute (INE) on Thursday.
Looking at the prices of materials, for January there was an 0.9 fall (2.2% the previous month), while the cost of labour went up 5.7%. (-1.3% in December 2023)
In turn, the cost of materials contributed by -0.5% to the ICCHN like-for-like variation rate (-3.3 in December, 2023) The labour component contributed by 2.4%. (3.0% in December, 2023)
Among the materials that most influenced the aggregated downward price variation, were coverings, insulation and waterproofing materials which fell around 15%, and steel for concrete steel and galvanised coverings, glass and mirrors with reductions of around 10%. Cement, paints, primers, undercoats and varnishes were down by 5%.
In terms of ICCHN monthly variation his settled at 1.4% (2.2% in December), with the costs of materials increasing 0.9%, while the cost of labour rose 2.2%.
The labour and materials components contributed by 0.5% and 0.9% respectively to an ICCHN monthly variation rate of -0.4 in January for both.