The booming Eastern Cape construction industry is expected to gain more momentum, with total commercial building plans approved in the first four months of the year growing by more than 300% over last year.

This figure is the highest out of all the provinces, although buildings completed in the Eastern Cape over the same period lagged behind the Western Cape, North West Province, Limpopo and the Free State.

Industry sources in the province expect the construction activity to shift to the industrial and civil engineering sectors, with new factories to be built at the Coega IDZ and government expected to spend vast amounts on building new infrastructure.

Concrete4U sales and marketing director Jerome Perils said the construction industry in Port Elizabeth was booming, especially in the commercial and industrial sectors.

“The boom is expected to continue until 2010 with the soccer stadium and other spin offs that will come from the Soccer World Cup.

“For instance hotel beds have to more than double to keep up with demand, so we expect to see new hotels built before then,” Perils said.

He said the industry expected new factories to be built soon at Coega as well as at the Nelson Mandela Bay Logistics Park in Uitenhage.

“If the aluminum smelter comes to Coega then the boom will continue until 2020,” he said.

Looking at the national picture, FNB property economist John Loos said that although the residential property sector was currently cooling off, commercial property building activity appeared to be filling the gap.

“The acceleration of commercial property returns last year to an impressive total sector return of 30,1% was the third consecutive year of improved returns.

“With fixed investment generally lagging economic activity and profitability, still stronger commercial property building activity should be witnessed again this year,” he said.

Civil engineering works appeared to have been gathering steam in recent years, he said.

According to the Industry Insight project database, growth in value of civil engineering projects awarded last year was 11,4%, and has accelerated to 24% in the first quarter of this year compared with the previous year.

Last week Public Enterprises Minister Alec Erwin said that the department would spend about R27-billion in construction over five years.

Most of the R27-billion would go into civil engineering, he said, with a further R9-billion going towards electrical machinery, R8-billion to non- electrical machinery and R11-billion on transport equipment.

In the budget speech in Bhisho this year it was announced about R670- million would be spent on the Eastern Cape Extended Public Works Programme in the next two financial years.

Perils said the province had a huge public works backlog and expected a lot of construction business activity out of government spending. “Port Elizabeth has a lot of catching up to do compared with key growth regions like Gauteng and the Western Cape.”