The Construction Costs Index in the A.C. of the Basque Country increased by 0.5% in April 2006 with regard to the previous month, by which the inter-annual rate for the months came to 3.2%, according to EUSTAT data. The increase in relation to the previous December was 3.4%.

In April 2006 labour costs did not vary at all (0.0%), while the cost of raw materials increased by 0.7%.

The Building and Civil Works subsectors registered quite a similar evolution, with 0.7% growth on the previous month for Building and 0.6% for raw material costs in Civil Works. The inter-annual evolution for these two subsectors shows that both follow quite similar trends: raw material costs for Building grew by 2.9%, while raw material costs for Civil Works increased by 2.8%.

In April the highest price increases corresponded to the raw materials consumed by Explosives and gases (5.7%), Oil by-products (4.9%), Asphalt products (4.9%), Iron and steel (2.6%), Hardware articles (1.6%) and Glass (1.4%), among others. Prices fell, on the other hand, for raw materials consumed by Electric energy (-1.7%), Structures and boilermaking (-0.8%), Metal piping (-0.3%) and Mining arids (-0.1%), among others.

Among the prices of raw materials consumed by the sector that experienced higher rates of inflation over the whole of the last twelve months were: Asphalt products (23.4%), Oil by-products (20.0%), Electric energy (15.6%), Glass (7.3%) and Iron and steel (5.0%). By contrast, there were reductions in the inter-annual prices of (April 2006 on April 2005) raw materials for Metal piping (-7.1%), Lime, gypsum and plaster (-1.9%) and Ceramic products (-0.1%), among others.