Despite the pre-election turmoil in Georgia, turnover of the construction sector has increased by GEL 271 million in the second part of 2012, amounting to GEL 817.7 million according to data of the National Statistics Office of Georgia.
The sector, which failed to overcome the effects of the recession for a long time following the beginning of the 2008 global economic crisis, has shown significant growth in employee numbers. “The construction sector in Georgia is definitely in a phase of revival,” Zaza Gelashvili, Professor at Free University of Tbilisi , told The FINANCIAL. The sector may still experience a second downturn though if the political situation continues to worsen. “There is a real danger that current political events will have a negative impact on the real estate market,” said Nikoloz Urushadze, General Director at Paragon LTD, a member of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS). In 2011, according to preliminary figures, turnover of the construction sector was GEL 1.703 billion. “In the second quarter of the current year the number of employees in the construction business increased by 6,444 people, coming to 53,426 workers in total. The data of the two quarters of 2012 exceeds the number of workers of the whole of 2011 by 21,909. In 2011, a total of 31,517 people were employed in the construction business,” Gelashvili said. “2011 and 2012 were quite successful years for the real estate market. Stability is a key point for this market in general. Till last week Georgia had been maintaining stability. It was the most important message to investors; they could easily foresee capital investment. Georgia has hosted many investors from Arabic states, Israel and Russia, all interested in investing in real estate,” Urushadze said. According to Urushadze the largest projects of the past two years in the residential business were m2 and Lisi, run by SBRE and GRDC “As the daughter company of Bank of Georgia , m2 has been selling four and five times more flats than predicted. This is a better result than from before the August 2008 war. So its reputation is a permanent problem of this sector. Consumers do not trust that developers will complete the projects they start. Our company planned a project that included a specific number of selling spaces but as time went by the sales volume sharply exceeded our advance expectations
Source:www.dwvg.ge |
October 05, 2012
