Sale of construction materials industry drops 1.8% in April

The sales of the construction materials industry in the country are below the expected this beginning of year, and industry entrepreneurs have already studied decreasing projections to 2019. Sales in April grew 3.6% compared to March, but declined 1.8% compared to April last year. In the first four months of 2019, sales declined 0.2% in relation to the same months of 2018. And in the accumulated of the last 12 months until April, sales remained stable against the accumulated in the previous 12 months. The data are from research conducted by the Brazilian Association of Construction Materials Industry (ABRAMAT) and anticipated to the Broadcast, real-time news system of the State group. The survey also showed that the amount of people employed in the Materials industry in April had a slight high of 0.3% before the same month last year. In the accumulated year, a growth of 0.6% was recorded, and in the accumulated in 12 months there was an expansion of 1.6%. Revision in the Projectionsthe initial projection of Abramat, in partnership with Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV), was a growth of 2.0% of sales in 2019. The calculations were drawn at the end of last year, when the expectations were more positive for the performance of the Brazilian economy and for the government this year. However, the results of the industry's sales surveys up to here are not enough to "diagnose a sustainable resumption of the segment," says Abramat President Rodrigo Navarro. "So far, we keep our projection, but we'll do a review next month," he said. In the executive's view, the industry is still limited due to facts outside the sector, such as the absence of structural reforms in the country and the shutdown or slowness of public infrastructure works. " The Brazilian economy presents healthy indicators ", says, citing interest, inflation and exchange relatively controlled. "But structuring measures are needed to clear bottlenecks for the growth of civil construction as a whole," he notes. In view of this scenario, the president of Abramat charges the implementation of the reforms in Congress, such as the welfare, and the resumption of major public infrastructure works, which will help to boost the materials industry.