As expected, the Warsaw Stock Exchange’s WIG-Budownictwo index rebounded in the fourth quarter of last year, pulled up by the market’s top performing builders. Out of the 10 construction companies tracked in the index, seven managed to improve their performance during the first three months of the year, with Poland’s biggest player, Budimex, opening the list. The troubled Polimex-Mostal and PBG, on the other hand, both closed the first quarter in the red.
This has bolstered confidence in the sector, with market watchers predicting the slowdown may finally be over. Roman Wieczorek of Skanska AB in Stockholm points out there has been a substantial cash injection of public funds over the past years into Poland’s building sector, which has suffered from poor contract management.
“None of us turned out to be prepared for such a substantial cash inflow into the sector […] but on the other hand, we all knew the regulations on the contracts, so we might have been expecting the prices of construction materials and services from the subcontractors to go up,” said Wieczorek.
