bauma 2010 – Record number of exhibitors

In 2010, bauma, the International Trade Fair for Construction Machinery, Building Material Machines, Mining Machines, Construction Vehicles and Construction Equipment, is set to attract the highest number of exhibitors since launch. According to the latest plans, there will be space to accommodate more than 3,000 exhibitors at the 2010 event. The higher capacity comes from the provision of extra space in the form of temporary halls on the open-air site, from new and existing joint stands and due to some of the regular exhibitors altering their space requirements. Nevertheless, according to the Exhibition Director Georg Moller, it will not be possible to meet in full all the requests for space: "We are particularly pleased about the level of interest from Chinese, Turkish and in particular the Indian exhibitors –India being the partner country of bauma in 2010. In some cases we have received double the number of requests for exhibition space from these countries than in 2007," he summed up. Exhibitors from Europe, too – for example, Italy, Great Britain and the Netherlands – will again be taking the top slots in the international exhibitor ranking for bauma 2010.

All this is a strong indicator that the industry worldwide is looking forward with confidence to the leading world trade fair, bauma 2010, which takes place from 19 to 25 April 2010 in Munich.

Prospects for the building and construction industry worldwide in 2010
Thanks to extensive government economic stimulus programmes, aimed to a considerable extent at the construction sector, activity in construction has picked up better in most industrial and emerging countries than the economy as a whole. For 2010, but increasingly so for 2011, it is expected that most countries will see a revival in activity in the building and construction sector.

Europe
In Europe a slight fall of 1 percent in building production is still expected in 2010. But this is due solely to the poor development in commercial construction. Civil engineering, by contrast, is expected to grow by 2.7 percent, mainly because of the extensive economic stimulus programmes in many member states of the EU. In 2011 building investment is predicted to expand by 2 percent Europe-wide, again driven by investment in civil engineering projects, contributing 3 percent growth. The slight downturn in overall production in 2010 is due to the negative effect from countries like Spain, Ireland, Finland and Portugal, where prices have fallen dramatically following the end of the boom in residential property. In the reform economies of Central Europe, however, growth in construction activity is set to expand by 6 percent as early as 2010, accelerating to 10 percent in 2011. The engine behind this growth, some of it double-digit, will continue to be Poland.

Russia
In Russia building activity has increased considerably during the last decade, thanks to surging income from oil and gas exports. Within just five years, for example, the number of new apartments coming onto the market leaped by over 50 percent. In 2008 the Russian construction reached a volume of around 130 billion euros, which is 11 percent of GDP. However, Russia has also been affected by the international economic crisis, coupled in this case with rapidly falling income for the state from energy exports, due to falling prices on the world market. Nevertheless building activity overall has stayed stable in 2009, a downturn of around 5 percent is, however, expected for 2010, followed in 2011 by modest growth.