FNB/BER (First National Bank / Bureau for Economic Research) released their latest Civil and Building confidence indices this week.
The Civil Confidence Index is 5 (out of 100) which means that 95% of civil engineering construction companies surveyed are dissatisfied with prevailing business conditions.
The Building Confidence Index is at 4:
As a specialist recruiter in the construction industry I’m also receiving a record amount of correspondence from construction people who’ve been laid off.
All my existing construction industry clients are either retrenching or have at least curtailed recruitment activities.
The only silver lining I can bring to this is the acknowledgement by President Ramaphosa that the South African government is looking at kick-starting the economy through a massive infrastructure spending program similar to what Franklin D. Roosevelt did in the 1930’s to drag the USA out of the Great Depression.
This will only however work if we build projects that generate wealth. Repainting the country’s fleet of railway carriages won’t help but building a railway line to a new iron mine will.
If you feel like praying, now is a good time.
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