The Chamber of Commerce of Santa Cruz de Tenerife warned this Friday that 63% of construction companies in the Canary Islands have problems finding suitable labor, which causes the slowdown of a sector that "has much more room for growth", the Chamber reports in a statement.
This conclusion underlies the latest Sector Situation Bulletin prepared by the Studies Services of the Chamber of Commerce of Santa Cruz de Tenerife corresponding to the fourth quarter of the year, which also takes stock of annual performance.
According to the latest Business Confidence survey, the note states, difficulties in finding labor have become the main limitation for the economic activity of the sector, despite the fact that during the last year 2,283 more jobs (4%) were registered and the number of unemployed decreased by 1,611 people, compared to the same period in 2022.
This represents an annual decrease of 9.5% to place the total number of Social Security affiliates at 58,814 and the number of registered unemployed at 15,430.
In this sense, the president of the Chamber of Commerce of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Santiago Sesé, warns that the construction sector, with that 63%, is the one that has the most difficulties in finding workers compared to transport and hospitality (52%) and the set of activity sectors (43.6%).
Regarding the prospects for 2024, according to data from the latest business confidence indicator, the vast majority of companies surveyed expect to maintain "normality" regarding growth expectations (63%), although it is true that at the beginning of 2024 there are more companies that are pessimistic about the evolution of their businesses (20%) than optimistic ones (18%).
In this negative balance, according to the Chamber, factors such as the high cost of materials, the slowness and insecurity in the processing of files, as well as the difficulties in finding labor are influencing.
Sesé has argued that the growth margin of the sector in the Canary Islands will be accompanied by public collaboration that during the past year experienced an annual increase in tenders for works of 1.2% due exclusively to upward variations in the building section (27.2%), since civil works fell by 16.4%.
In addition, the bulletin highlights that the indicators of private activity reflect a good annual evolution that is reflected in the visas for project management processed during the year 2023 experienced an average growth in the year of 28.1%.
In Sesé's opinion, "these advances are being limited" by the administrative difficulties for the delays in approving the planning of many city councils, in addition to the lack of impetus in the construction of housing that "is generating an imbalance between supply and demand that strains prices".
The report also details that the price of protected housing increases by an annual average of 7.2%, 5.6 points above the national 1.6%, and that of free housing rises by 6.6%, 2.7 points more than the national (3.9%), while the price of land registers an increase of 4.8% in its annual average up to the third quarter of last year and at the national level it experiences an average decrease for the same period of -2.8%.
