SANTO DOMINGO- Although timidly, several items used by the construction industry for buildings continue to experience still minimal declines, but adding to steel, the first product that after several months of rising prices, experienced a drop of RD$10,000 last week.
PVC pipes, toilets, sinks, and sieves have decreased slightly in price at the Direen hardware store on Independence Avenue.
“We bought those products at a slightly lower price, and the suppliers have told us that when we need to restock other items, we will buy them at a slightly lower price, just like the rod that went down in price,” explains Jackson Espinosa, sales manager.
It states that cement and sand still maintain the same prices, without registering any reductions.
Mario Roa of Ferretería San Miguel agrees that PVC pipes have decreased in price in recent days, as have iron and steel derivatives; he noted that aggregates continue to have high prices.
“They’ve gone down a little, but it all comes from China, it’s not a big deal, the rod price did go down significantly,” he explained.
Fermín Acosta, former president of the Association of Housing Builders and Developers (ACOPROVI), praised the drop in the price of steel and said he hopes that construction materials in general will continue to fall, highlighting some conditions that are in place for this.
“On the one hand, there is the reduction in freight costs in the international market and the reduction in the dollar exchange rate in the local market. This reduction has been driven, in part, by the reduction in demand,” says the construction businessman.
He added that the increase in interest rates also impacts the reduction in demand. “Therefore, we expect that this effect of reduced international freight costs will also impact the reduction in taxes and that together they will continue to drive price reductions not only for construction materials, but also for basic necessities,” he explained.
Rafael Durán, an engineer, states that despite the decrease in the price of steel, we cannot yet say that this will impact the reduction of housing because steel represents a very small percentage of the total cost of construction.
“So when you lower something by 10%, you have, for example, a 1% reduction of 3 million pesos, we're talking about 30,000 pesos. It's not that it's going to lower it considerably, but the other materials haven't lowered much; they remain at the same levels,” he explained.
He explained that it's unlikely construction material prices will drop significantly under the current circumstances. "Lowering them would require a construction shutdown for a few months so that the reduced demand would increase the supply of materials and drive prices down. But no builder can afford to stop for two months because everyone is behind schedule for one reason or another. So, with demand remaining high, hardware stores are unlikely to lower prices, perhaps only eventually.".
