CE Barometer April 2011: Spring strength

The CE Barometer remained steady in April, with results more or less in line with those seen in February and March. This underlined the continued optimistic sentiment in Europe, with respondents upbeat about their current and future prospects.

A balance of +30,8% of said they saw month-on-month activity improve in April, slight improvement on both February and March's results. Although the CE Barometer has been in this territory for a few months, the April result was the strongest for this measure of confidence for more than four years, the balance figure being the percentage of positive respondents minus the negative percentage.

The future outlook for the industry remained positive, with a balance of +42,3% of respondents saying they expected activity to be higher in a year's time. Again, there was very little change from March's results, and in fact this measure of confidence has been high since late 2009.

As a result, the CE Climate - an amalgamation of three confidence measures - remained comfortably in positive territory at +34,9% - not quite as high as it was in February, but for the third month running it was still on a par with the pre crisis levels seen in late 2007.

Take part

CE would like to thank all those that took part in the April survey. It was completed by more than 300 construction professionals in 30 countries around the region.

The survey, which takes just a one minute to complete, is open to all construction professionals working in Europe. The CE Barometer survey is open from the 1st to the 15^th of each month on our website. Full information can be found at www.cebarometer.eu