THE construction sector is confident that it will again experience good growth this year after a brisk last year that saw the sector expanding by 5,32%.

Government will spend about R50bn on construction projects over the next three years. This represents real growth of 12% a year for the sector, says Carl Grim, CEO of Aveng, SA's largest construction company. The federation ofcivil engineering contractors is equally upbeat, expecting nominal turn over from civil engineering alone to rise from about R16bn last year to R20bn this year.

Optimism in the sector stems from the expected decline in inflation and
interest rates, together with the recovery of the rand against the major
currencies and other factors.

SA's economy is expected to continue expanding at a rate of 3% a year.
"This growth would in part be brought about by government expenditure as
well as private investment, which will support growth in gross fixed capital
formation," says the federation's Pierre Blaauw.

"Prudent finances have culminated in a declining budget deficit which,
coupled with government's focus on infrastructure development, holds great
promise for the civil industry," Blaauw says.

Federation members were encouraged by increased tender activity in the
latter part of last year. However, Blaauw says underspending due to
institutional capacity problems is still preventing the full benefit of
rising government capital expenditure from trickling down to the industry.

The industry is planning a summit at which some of these issues will be
discussed. Meanwhile, some construction analysts have said that SA's rate of
capital expenditure is still not high enough to catch up on the country's
R170bn social and economic infrastructure backlog.