Construction (west):
Slight increase in order reserves

The business climate improvement in the west Germany construction industry is attributable to the building construction sector. Nevertheless, assessments in this sector of both the business situation and the outlook were still more negative than in the civil engineering sector. For all construction sectors, average equipment utilisation stood at 59%, 3 percentage points below the previous-year level. Although order reserves increased to 2.7 months, assessments of these reserves were hardly any less negative than in the preceding two months.