Despite the recession, last year's construction orders reached a record high of 230 trillion won

4 Consecutive Years of Growth... Active Private Sector Orders

Despite the economic downturn, the domestic construction order volume last year reached a record high of 230 trillion won.

View of a reconstruction site in Seoul city / Photo by Hyunmin Kim kimhyun81@

According to the Construction Trend Briefing (Issue 896) recently published by the Korea Construction Industry Research Institute on the 5th, domestic construction orders, based on statistics from the Korea Construction Association, increased by 8.4% year-on-year to 229.749 trillion won, with both public and private sectors rising. This marks the fourth consecutive year of growth since 2019 and is the largest amount since statistics began in 1994.

Park Cheol-han, a research fellow at the Korea Construction Industry Research Institute, said, "While public orders remained favorable, private orders set a record high." He added, "In the private sector, the order increase was largest in non-residential buildings, civil engineering, and housing, in that order."

Specifically, last year's public orders were recorded at 56.8563 trillion won, up 1.5% from the previous year. Until the third quarter, there was a high growth rate of 8.5% compared to the same period last year, but the growth slowed in the fourth quarter due to a decrease in orders and an increase in failed bids.

In particular, housing orders increased by 11.4% year-on-year to 5.2041 trillion won but did not reach the levels of previous years, and non-residential building orders decreased by 2.6% due to a decline in government office orders.

On the other hand, private orders recorded a record high of 172.8927 trillion won, up 10.8% during the same period. The increase was prominent in non-residential buildings and civil engineering sectors. Housing orders were also favorable.

Civil engineering orders achieved a record high of 24.627 trillion won, up 37.0% year-on-year, driven by increased orders for semiconductor equipment installation and petrochemical plant projects.

Non-residential building orders also reached a record high of 67.4524 trillion won, up 13.5%. Although commercial office orders were sluggish, orders for large-scale semiconductor factories and knowledge centers increased. In fact, by construction type, factory and warehouse orders last year exceeded 35 trillion won, marking the largest scale ever.

Housing orders, boosted by active reconstruction projects, increased by 2.9% year-on-year to 80.8133 trillion won, the second highest ever recorded.