Capital expenditure on the road infrastructure is poised to considerably increase in Central Europe in the coming years

In its latest report entitled "Road construction market in Central Europe 2010 - Development forecasts and planned investments", the market research company PMR estimates that after a 2% decline in 2009, the road construction market in Central Europe will develop at the average nominal rate of 5% in the coming years, with its value exceeding EUR15bn annually in 2012 and 2013.

Capital expenditure on the road infrastructure is poised to considerably increase in Central Europe in the coming years. However, due to the magnitude of the planned projects, not all of the tasks expected to be financed from the EU budget for 2007-2013 will be executed. Thus, the final shape of the EU budget for 2014-2020 is crucial for the countries in the region.

According to PMR's report, Poland will exert the strongest influence on the situation in the region's road construction market; this country represents 40% of the market's value and currently prepares road infrastructure for the approaching Euro 2012 football championships.

Thanks to sizeable investments in motorways and expressways, unprecedented in Poland's history, the Central European road construction market is expected to report positive rate of growth. "Currently, the construction of almost 1,300 km of expressways and motorways in Poland, worth over EUR14bn, is already contracted. These projects have already commenced or will begin soon. Moreover, calls for tenders concerning projects with the total length of over 600 km have already been announced and these projects should be contracted in the coming months", says Bartlomiej Sosna, Senior Construction Analyst at PMR and the author of the report.

More importantly, procedures related to the preparation of the expressway network construction gained pace; in Poland, the expressway network is expected to be twice as dense as the country's motorway network. Thus, in 2010-2013, Poland will account for a steep two-thirds of the 1,200 km of new expressways in the region. As far as motorways are concerned, the other countries in the Central European region perform significantly better, thus the proportions in the regions will be maintained – almost 60% of the 1,700 km new motorways expected to be constructed in 2010-2013 will be built in the five smaller countries of the region (Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia).