The Construction Costs Index in the A.C. of the Basque Country registered a 0.3% increase in March 2006 with regard to the previous month, by which the inter-annual rate for the month came to 2.9%, according to EUSTAT data.

The increase registered in the first quarter of 2006 on the previous December is also 2.9%.

In March 2006 labour costs did not vary at all (0.0%), while raw material costs registered a 0.4% increase.

The subsectors Building and Civil Works registered a similar evolution, with 0.4% growth on the previous month, both for the area of Building and raw material costs for Civil Works. In the inter-annual evolution of these two subsectors they both followed very similar trends: raw material costs for Building grew by 2.4%, while raw material costs for Civil Works accumulated a 2.5% increase.

In March the highest increases in prices corresponded to the raw materials consumed by Oil by-products (2.6%), Asphalt products (2.6%), Glass (2.3%), Electric energy (1.9%) and Iron and steel (1.9%), among others. By contrast, there was a reduction in raw material prices for Lime, gypsum and plaster (-2.9%), Plastic piping (-0.6%), Artificial cement (-0.5%), Other metal articles (-0.4%), and Structures and boiler making (-0.2%), among others.

Among the prices of raw materials consumed by the sector that underwent the highest rates of inflation over the whole of the last twelve months were: Asphalt products (20.2%), Oil by-products (18.1%), Electric energy (8.5%), Glass (7.3%) and Artificial cement (4.1%). In addition, there were reductions in inter-annual prices (March 2006 on March 2005), of the raw materials used in Metal piping (-5.0%), Plastic piping (-1.6%) and Lime, gypsum and plaster (-0.8%), among others.