The construction materials market is expected to recover this year with the property market’s bottlenecks removed and large public construction works expected. (Photo: VNA) Le Hoang Chau, chairman of the HCM City Real Estate Association, said it wouldrecover from the first quarter since Vietnam had done an excellent job of containingthe pandemic, instilling confidence in businesses.
Rising domestic consumption and the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA)would drive the retail industry, and foreign retailers, especially from the EU,were expected to enter the country, increasing demand for office space, hesaid.
Vo Thi Khanh Trang, head of market research at Savills Vietnam, said in thecity high-end condos remained in demand despite the pandemic and there were nosigns of a fall in prices.
According to the Vietnam Real Estate Brokers, some 20 housing projects will belaunched in HCM City in the first half of this year in all segments with 30,000units.
Pham Van Bac, director of the Ministry of Construction’s department of buildingmaterials, said the rise and fall of the construction market was closely linkedwith the property market.
It would also benefit from the public investment projects to be implementedthis year, he said.
Repairs to infrastructure damaged by the floods and landslides in the centralregion would also require large volumes of construction materials, and allthese factors would cause the construction materials market to rise sharplythis year, he said.
The industry needed to prioritise producing new materials, scale and advancedtechnologies as well as projects that use waste from other sectors, he said.
VNDirect Securities Company said the building materials industry would benefitgreatly from the increasing investment in construction this year, including inmajor infrastructure projects like the North-South Expressway.
It estimated that the building materials market would be worth 23.7 trillion VNDthis year.
Vietnam could also benefit from China’s plans to invest in infrastructure thisyear, which would increase its demand for steel and cement, it said, estimatingthe trend would continue until mid-year at least.
The steel industry exported nearly 3.65 billion USD worth of products in thefirst nine months of last year, a year-on-year increase of 16 percent.
China was the largest buyer, accounting for 28.5 percent of the exports,followed by Cambodia and Thailand.
However, imports provided the industry with fierce competition and it also hadto deal with trade remedy investigations in export markets, experts said./.
VNA
