Construction prices rose rapidly in the Czech Republic beginning in 2015 and continued through 2018, but this cycle came to an end in 2019, according to the International Construction Costs (ICC) 2020 study by Arcadis. It left Prague 67th worldwide in terms of costs of construction, the highest in Central & Eastern Europe save for Zagreb, which placed 64th. Warsaw and Belgrade were just behind it in 68th and 69th place while Krakow and Poznan took the 71 and 72 spots. Bucharest, according to the construction consultancy, came in 87th. The company found that major construction projects in the Czech Republic are underway with contractors working to minimize delays. “However, we observe outages for both foreign workers and supplies of imported construction materials,” writes the company. “The growth of construction costs in recent years in the Czech Republic was driven mainly by wage growth (which was even higher than in the West), limited capacity of construction companies and short-term lack of certain types of building materials. In 2019, the costs of building materials, in my opinion, reached the maximum at which they will remain – due to long-term contracts – this year,” says Milan Vencl, Cost Consultant at Arcadis.
