The Alicante Chamber of Commerce has prepared a report on the situation of the construction sector in the province, which it has completed with 12 suggestions aimed at improving its state. According to the study, construction represents 7% of the GDP of the province of Alicante, which is two percentage points more than the national average.
Its number of Social Security affiliates rose to 57,165 in 2023, a figure that exceeds the previous year’s record by 5.4% and represents 8% of employment in the province of Alicante.
In 2023 as a whole, 53,155 homes were sold in the province of Alicante, the third highest number since 2007, of which 90% corresponded to second-hand homes. Of these, 28,113 homes were sold to foreigners, a figure that places the province of Alicante at the head of the Spanish provinces in home purchases and sales by foreigners (23% of the national total).
However, in 2023, 7,222 new construction homes were approved, a figure that is well below the average for the period 2000-2007. Regarding the price of free housing, it grew by 5.8% in 2023, 1.9 percentage points above the national average, reaching a value of 1,488.2 euros per square meter.
The 12 proposals of the Alicante Chamber for the construction and real estate development sectors are the result, according to sources from the institution, of the work of more than a year of the Infrastructure and Urban Planning Commission in which information has been compiled, their suggestions and have learned, first-hand, the challenges and opportunities of a sector with an important weight in the province’s economy. Are:
1. Promotion of private and public initiative for the generation of officially protected housing (VPO).
2. Promote access to the first home.
3. Generation of land destined for housing development, which would reduce the current imbalance between supply and demand.
4. Positive administrative silence (two months).
5. Generalization of the use of responsible declaration.
6. Establish a period of three months for the resolution of the sectoral plans necessary for any urban planning action where different sectoral administrations intervene, so that once said period has elapsed without the resolution report being issued, it is understood as positive administrative silence.
7. Streamline and make procedures more flexible to adapt the compatibility of urban uses to the current market (residential, industrial and tertiary).
8. Restriction on the use of own resources (public companies) for the execution of public works by emergency means.
9. Establish a special price review mechanism in which salary costs are also included in public contracts.
10. Review, update and improvement of the Public Sector Contracts Law.
11. Solve the problem of the lack of qualified labor.
12. Provision of the necessary infrastructure for the development and improvement of the different sectors of business activity, accessibility and mobility in the province of Alicante, currently underfinanced.
