When the industry is short of labor, it’s difficult to meet demands. Even when you have skilled workers.
This is now what the private construction sector in the Philippines feels, according to a report by real estate consultancy Colliers International which says that shortage in construction workers is weighing down private building activities nationwide.
Labor shortage is becoming a threat to private construction in the country, says the report. This as the industry is now entering a new age of golden infrastructure as planned by the Duterte administration in the next six years.
“Colliers believes that private construction could’ve been more robust if not for construction delays brought about by the lack of adequately-skilled workers. The intensified development of public infrastructure projects around the country will exacerbate this problem,” Colliers says.
It notes that due to the increasing demand for office and retail development, the private construction sector made a 16.2% growth in the third quarter of 2016. Most of these developments come from the continuously growing IT-BPPM sector and rising purchasing power of Filipinos.
In that period, Metro Manila had an estimated 86,000 square meters of new office space delivered. That’s almost twice the area complete in the same period in 2015.
And it’s not only in Metro Manila that the private construction sector thrives. Colliers points out the completion of new office and retail space in key growth areas across the country including Clark, Cavite, Laguna, Cebu, and Davao.
“Developers are responding positively to the growing demand for office space, with bulk of the new supply being absorbed by IT-BPM firms,” it says.
As a recommendation, Colliers shares that developers should take a more aggressive approach in partnering with the government’s skills development agency in providing training to available manpower from the countryside.
Source: Philippine Star
