Contributing to this upward trend are the prices of construction materials, which have soared 15% in one year.

In March, new construction costs grew 11.6% year-on-year, accelerating three percentage points (p.p.) compared to February, says INE. As in recent months, this performance is mainly due to two factors: the rise in the price of materials and the rise in the cost of labour.

The prices of materials used in construction (with a weight of 8.9 p.p. in the calculation) increased by 15.3% (up from the 10.3% rise in February). Among the materials that most contributed to this evolution are steel, ceramic products, diesel, glass, agglomerate and cork tiles and wood derivatives, all with year-on-year growth of over 20%, states the INE.

In turn, the cost of labour (weight of 2.7 p.p. in the calculation) increased 6.4% in March, above the 6.3% growth observed in February.