Bennett Oghifo with agency report
13 November 2009
Lagos — Construction growth in Nigeria will be the fastest of all markets, according to the latest 10-year forecast from Global Construction Perspectives and Oxford Economics.
The new study says China will overtake the US as the world's biggest construction market by 2018, but that the fastest growth will happen in Nigeria.
The survey said infrastructure is the hottest sector to be in and that "it is set to grow in emerging markets by a staggering 128 per cent from now to 2020, compared with just 18 percent over the same period in developed countries".
The report, which named Nigeria "global hotspot from here to 2020" says the nation's construction growth is even faster than India's, reflecting increased wealth and urbanisation resulting from the country's oil production.
"Its population of approximately 154 million is urbanising at one of the fastest rates in the world, but construction is now only 3.2 percent of GDP," it said.
It stated that from 2009 to 2020, only Nigeria and India will enjoy higher growth rates than China in their construction output, but that despite India's continued construction boom, China's market will still be between three and four times bigger by 2020.
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It says in just ten years, China's already massive construction market will be worth almost US$2.4 trillion, nearly 20 per cent of global construction output.
The ten year forecast indicates that emerging markets will rapidly overtake the construction output of their developed neighbours.
"The top ten highest growth markets in 2020 will be entirely composed of emerging markets, with Poland the only European country to feature on the list," it said.
Speaking at the launch of the report "Global Construction 2020" in London, Mike Betts of Global Construction Perspectives said that China's construction industry looks unstoppable.
"The construction market in China is already enormous at almost double the size of its nearest rival Japan. The United States has for some time held the top spot but despite its strong predicted growth over the next decade, China will become the world's largest construction market by 2018," he said.
Adrian Cooper of leading business forecasters Oxford Economics said: "We have identified the key drivers and used data including population projections, long term GDP estimates and public sector budgets to feed into our modelling to help us understand how the global construction industry is changing at a rapid rate.
"All of the data points to both short and long term growth in emerging markets. We predict that in just ten years time construction in these markets will more than double in size, growing by an estimated 110% and representing 17.2 percent of GDP in 2020."
The report highlights that today's global construction market is worth an estimated $7.5 trillion, representing 13.4 percent of global GDP. But by 2020, construction will be a $12.7 trillion global market, an overall growth of 70 per cent in the next decade. Construction in 2020 will account for 14.6 per cent of global GDP.
The largest construction market globally is residential accounting for 40 per cent of the total global construction market by 2020 when it will be worth $5.1 trillion, said the report.
The forecast is already coming true for Nigeria with the federal and state governments policy of developing the nation's infrastructure through Public Private Partnership (PPP) initiatives that have resulted in the concessioning of airports, roads, bridges and public buildings.
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this forecast is good news IF it is going to be that ALL Nigerians will have 24/7 supply of water and electricity plus improved road ways. Seeing is believing. Thank you.
Well, I think we've gotten that potential to be the fastest construction country but we need a visionary leader to direct us
The author of this article failed to mention that China has two billion people and their construction industry should be the largest in the world. The myth about China is that it's a rich country but this country doesn't produce housing for most of its people. This is why China practices population control in that country.
This statistics did not take into account budget implementation. The problem with our country Nigeria is that they can budget for anything but they do not know how to implement the budget. Every year for more than 8 years now, the Benin-Lagos road have always been budgeted for, till today the road has degerated nothing is done. This will only happen if government learn how to implement their budget.