Road construction in Central Europe to grow at a faster pace?

2010-09-02

Road density in Central Europe is still below 1 km of road per km², according to the PMR Publications report Road construction market in Central Europe 2010. Development forecasts and planned investments. However, after a slowdown in 2009, due to the global economic crisis, the road construction market in Central Europe should begin to revive this year and develop at a more rapid pace in 2011 and 2012, with Poland as the main driving force.
In Bulgaria road density is lower than the average for the region, amounting to 0.367 km/km², while the density in the Czech Republic is 0.706 km of road per 1 km² and in Slovakia, almost 0.895 km. Bulgaria started to build motorways in 1972, but since then only a total of 418 km of motorways have been constructed (i.e. 11.3 km per year on average). According to the PMR Publications report, the lack of financial resources for developing modern roads in Bulgaria, the low usage of EU funds as well as the lack of long-term road infrastructure tasks has lead to the country’s lagging not only behind the rest of the EU countries, but in some aspects behind neighbouring countries in the region.

In comparison with Western European countries, the quality of the road network in the Central European region is still poor and has been identified as a serious obstacle to the rapid economic development of the region. Hopefully, over the next few years many new motorway and expressway projects are to be implemented in the countries of the region, and many projects are in the planning stage for the EU perspective 2014-2020. However, in some cases the significant concentration of road works expected in the following years and fierce market competition may create some serious threats to the road construction market.

Bartłomiej Sosna
Senior Construction Analyst
PMR Publications