Building work in severe decline

The struggling construction sector in Portugal suffered another fall in November, dropping 1.1% compared to October.

Looking at the annual figures, the news was worse. Data from Eurostat showed that construction work in November 2014 was 5.7% lower than it had been in November 2013.

This was one of the largest decreases in the eurozone, with just Italy’s decline of 8% being greater. At the same time, construction work was up in Spain over the year by 16%.

This is against an average rise of 2.2% for the euro area as a whole. Eurostat reports that this was due to a rise of 2.7% in building construction but a fall of 0.5% in civil engineering works.