黑洞社区

A strong surge in business in March led to new orders rising at their fastest rate for four and a half years, according to the latest Markit/CIPS Construction Purchasing Managers鈥� Index.

The index rose for the sixth consecutive month in March to 56.7, up from 54.3 in February.

The index has posted above the 50.0 no-change level that separates growth from contraction in each month since January 2011.

The commercial sector was the strongest performing sub-sector, while activity in the civil engineering sector also grew at its fastest rate since March 2011.

But industry experts questioned whether the survey results had picked up the 鈥渇ull picture鈥�.

Simon Rawlinson, head of strategy and research at EC Harris, said: 鈥淥nly as recently as the fourth quarter of 2011, the ONS said new orders across almost all sectors were down apart from infrastructure.

鈥淥n the face of it this data is great news but it feels like it鈥檚 picking up growth in the 鈥榞ood news sectors鈥� [commercial and civil engineering] and hasn鈥檛 picked up what鈥檚 happening in the public sector.鈥�

Construction economist Brian Green said he was also sceptical about the CIPS/Markit figures: 鈥淭here are methodological problems with this sample. If construction is doing well, why is ?鈥�

But Sarah Bingham, an economist at Markit, said the survey should pick up activity in the public sector. 鈥淲e ask people how orders perform in three sectors [commercial, housing and civil engineering] 鈥� we鈥檇 expect a lot of public sector work to fall into the housing and civil engineering sectors.鈥�