Shortage of cash hampering road improvements in Poland
Experts from the Polish Chamber of the Road Construction Industry (OIGD) have announced that an extra €9.3bn will be needed in order to build the express roads and motorways required for the Euro 2012 football tournament.
If the money is not made available Poland will be unable to build the roads within the allotted deadline, the OIGD added. Representatives have estimated that around €20bn has so far been earmarked for Poland’s road improvements.
Bourgas Airport in Bulgaria expected to increase capacity by 40%
Bourgas Airport is expected to increase its capacity by 40% this summer. The increase will become possible thanks to a new departure terminal, which will be connected to the existing departure terminal.
The renovated luggage system can now handle large aircraft with more than 250 passengers and more than €3.6m has been invested in increasing the airport’s capacity.
Bourgas Airport is the busiest in Bulgaria during the summer season. The airport is expected to serve more than 2m passengers in 2007, up 10% on 2006.
Turkey attempts to end political and economic crisis
Turkey is due to hold general elections on 22 July, four months ahead of schedule, in the hope of ending a political crisis over who should be the next president of the republic.
Political crisis erupted in Turkey when, on 24 April, the ruling conservative Justice and Development Party named Islamist cabinet minister Abdullah Gül as its presidential candidate, sparking massive anti-government demonstrations and threats by the armed forces to topple the administration.
The crisis threatens to derail the country’s fast-growing economy and cause deep divisions among its citizens along religious and secular lines. This comes at a time when five years of robust economic growth is slowing and concern over Turkey’s ballooning current account deficit is increasing.
Household spending decreased in the second half of 2006 and domestic motor vehicle sales slumped 29.8% in March 2007 for the 10th consecutive month. Interest rates on consumer loans increased sharply in May 2006 following fluctuations in global currency markets and they have yet to return to pre-crisis levels.
As a result, manufacturers have turned to exports to increase production and avert a recession. In the first three months of this year, Turkey’s exports reached $23bn, up 25.1% from Q1 2006, the Turkish Exporters Assembly (TIM) reported. TIM said Turkey’s exports could exceed $100bn this year, up from $85.9bn in 2006. However, imports totalled $136.3bn in 2006 and the current account deficit looks set to grow for the foreseeable future.
House prices shoot up by 9% in Poznan in June
Poznan easily led the way in terms of price growth for Polish flats in June with property values rising on average by 9%. The city broke another price threshold last month, going over Zloty 7,000sqm (€1,867) with the average price per square metre at the end of May standing at more than €1,933, according to data from redNet Property Group.
In contrast to the last few months, prices actually dropped in a few cities, although only in the case of Wroclaw was there any significant devaluation. Prices in Poland’s two cheapest large cities – Lodz and Katowice – rose by less than 2% in June. In comparison with the beginning of the year, the enormous price gap between Warsaw, Krakow and Wroclaw, and Poland’s other big cities has considerably narrowed.
Currently prices in the Tri-City area are higher than in Wroclaw and prices in Poznan have almost caught up also. The only major urban centre in June where flats could still be bought for less than Zloty 5,000sqm (€1,333) was Katowice, although this situation is not expected to last very long as Katowice is now predicted to have the highest price growth in the near future.
So far this year around 16,000 new flats have been built for sale in Poland’s main cities.
Worldwide News
Real estate market booming in Lima, Peru
Office, retail and industrial real estate is booming in Lima and the outlook is reported to be even brighter, according to the Latin Business Chronicle.
Lima real estate brokers are closely monitoring an imminent decision by the US Congressional regarding approval of a US-Peru free trade agreement. The free trade agreement (FTA) is expected to enhance the property sector further, according to Colliers International in Lima.
A decision on the agreement is expected within the next two months. Two-way trade between the United States and Peru is expected to grow significantly as a result of the FTA. The US Chamber of Commerce predicts that US exports to Peru will grow 19% annually after the treaty is implemented compared to 14% without the treaty.
Last year, Peru’s GDP grew by 8%, its best performance since 1995.
Master plan forces Abu Dhabi projects to be more spacious
Developers in Abu Dhabi are being told to scale back projects in order to comply with the new ‘Abu Dhabi 2030 master plan’. The plan has been prepared by the Executive Affairs Authority and is awaiting final approval by the government.
The master plan applies to all developments around the capital and is expected to insist on more open public spaces and a lower-density urban environment. Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and chairman of the Executive Council, has said he does not want the city of Abu Dhabi to look like any other high-rise city or feel claustrophobic.
The government has already instructed the three developers of Reem Island to reduce the density of the development and the planned population of the island. It was conceived as a collection of high-rise towers with a population of about 350,000, but this has now been reduced to 200,000.
The decision is expected to affect all three developers’ business plans. According to consultants on the island, a number of options are being considered to reduce density and population. These include replacing residential buildings with office blocks to reduce the overall population, and building golf courses that create revenue-earning landscaped areas.
China to keep population below 1.4bn
China ’s population and family planning minister announced recently that China will work hard to make sure that its mainland population does not exceed 1.37bn by 2010.
Zhang Weiqing, minister in charge of the National Population and Family Planning Commission, stressed that China will keep its family planning policy in place to maintain a low birth level.
“But demographically speaking, China will face another upsurge of population growth in the coming five years, at which point China’s first single-child generation will enter reproductive age, which will make it all the more difficult to maintain a low birth level in the years that follow”, said Zhang.
Statistics from the commission show that China's population has been brought under control in the past 5 years, with the birth rate dropping from 14.03 per thousand to 12.20 per thousand, and the natural growth rate falling from 7.58 per thousand to 5.87 per thousand.
According to data released by the commission, if China failed to implement the family planning policy its population would be nearly 400m more than the present figure.
Zhang said China will continue to improve its legal system on population in an effort to work out laws and regulations to manage unbalanced sex ratios at birth. Government figures show 119 boys are born for every 100 girls in the world’s most populous nation. By 2020, around 40m men are expected to be living as frustrated bachelors.
Singapore ‘World’s hottest property market’
The property market in Singapore is the ‘World's hottest’ for major real estate investments, Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) announced in a new study on 19 July.
The firm attributed the city’s astounding rental growth and rising capital values as the reason it has outperformed all others during the first half of this year.
Capital values of prime property in the city-state have soared 50% in the past six months alone, the report stated.
The study tracked properties that sell for more than $5m around the world, which are mostly commercial buildings.
Property investments worldwide rose for the sixteenth quarter in a row, reaching a record $382bn in the first half of this year, up 17% from a year ago.
The bulk of these deals were made in the United States, where investments jumped 32% to $171bn. They rose 4% to $157bn US dollars in Europe, the study said. Asia-Pacific property investments climbed 12% to $55bn.
However, the Singapore government’s recent announcement that it will increase the development charge tax from 50% to 70% will cut into property developers’ future profit margins and could be a signal that the government is starting to take a proactive stance to cool the booming real estate market, analysts said.
