In March, construction costs for new residential buildings are estimated to have increased by 0.6%, 1.5 percentage points lower than in February. For the same month, the price of materials dropped 0.5%, while labor costs rose 2.3%.

The information in this release, referring to March, should already reflect some effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, both on the behavior of the price index and on the amount of primary information used to its compilation. Despite the difficulties, we call for collaboration of companies in responding to INE's surveys. The quality of official statistics depends crucially on this collaboration that INE thanks in advance.