CEMBUREAU year-end 2015 Economic Report: Continued modest growth across the EU but some clouds on th

Byjirong

Updated 2016-03-16

Brussels 9 March 2016 – Published today, the CEMBUREAU Quarterly Economic Report for Q4 2015 shows that no EU countries experienced recession in 2015. However, the latest quarterly data revealed that economic growth did not gain momentum in Q4 2015 on a quarterly basis, with very modest growth rates recorded in all major EU economies, i.e. 0.3% in the EU28 and Germany, 0.2% in France and 0.1% in Italy. There are growing fears of a deterioration in the macroeconomic environment, risks of continuing deflation despite unprecedented ECB action and several factors of uncertainty that have cast a shadow on growth prospects for 2016. Supportive external factors (oil prices, ECB’s Quantitative Easing, EUR devaluation) have yet to boost economic growth and investment as expected.

The latest leading indicators for the construction sector continued to show mixed signs and diverging developments in major euro area economies, but as a whole the sector showed levels of activity that are still rather low - although recovery has been in place in many Member States since H2 2013.

Construction investment data continued to show a clear disconnection between construction and macroeconomic cycles in Q4 2015, the latter recovering at a much faster speed than the construction sector which is lagging behind despite economic recovery.

Q4 2015 cement manufacturing indices seemed to have reversed the trend observed over the past quarters having recorded sharp increases in all the countries observed, albeit still remaining around very low levels in historical terms.

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