AICCOPN's March 2026 Cement Reading Rebounds 26% After a Two-Month Slide, Closing Q1 at +2.2% — Construction Credit Stock Hits €7.2 Billion (+11.2%) While Public Tenders Tumble 26% to €1.98 Billion

The Associação dos Industriais da Construção Civil e Obras Públicas — AICCOPN, the trade body for civil-construction and public-works contractors in Portugal — published its monthly Conjuntura da Construção – Informação Rápida bulletin on Thursday 14 May 2026, posting a 26% year-on-year rebound in cement consumption in the domestic market for March 2026 after two consecutive months of decline that had pulled the sector through a volatile first quarter. The March pull is enough to close Q1 2026 at +2.2% year-on-year for the headline cement-demand aggregate, even as the public-works leg of the construction map continues to register a sharp contraction in tenders and signed contracts.

The March Print

Cement consumption in the domestic market rebounded sharply from a January-February sequence that had recorded back-to-back declines — the January reading alone had fallen 5.6% year-on-year on the AICCOPN series. The association characterises the first three months of 2026 as carrying 'strong volatility' across the cement-demand line, with the March pull pivoting Q1 from a flat reading into modest positive territory. Cement is the standard leading indicator for active construction work on Portuguese sites — bagged demand tracks small renovations and the residential rehabilitation file, bulk demand tracks the public-works and large-residential pipeline — and the +26% snap signals that work-in-progress is broadening rather than retreating.

Credit and Licensing

The Banco de Portugal credit aggregate attached to the AICCOPN bulletin underlines the financing picture behind the cement rebound: the stock of credit to construction companies sits at €7.2 billion at the end of March 2026, up 11.2% year-on-year, with overdue credit down 9.2% over the same window. The financing channel is open and accelerating. The supply side of new permits, however, is moving in the opposite direction: municipal licensing through February 2026 registers a national contraction of 18.7%, with residential licensing down 21.7% and non-residential down 12.2%. The bottleneck on new construction activity in Portugal in 2026 is the planning channel, not the cement plant.

Public Works Under Pressure

The public-procurement leg is the weak limb of the Q1 read. Construction-sector public tenders printed at €1.982 billion in Q1 2026 — a 26% year-on-year contraction — while signed contracts came in at €956 million, down 27% year-on-year. The reading carries a political weight: the procurement compression sits inside the same window in which the Government is preparing the modular-construction acordo-quadro Infrastructure Minister Miguel Pinto Luz signalled would land at the Conselho de Ministros within weeks, and inside which the Idealista Q1 2026 housing-stock contraction showed national listings down 14% with Faro at -38%, Porto at -25% and Lisbon at -13%.

What This Means for Expats

Housing supply: the licensing collapse — and especially the 21.7% residential drop — confirms that the rate-limiting step on new housing in Portugal in 2026 is the planning channel, not the construction channel. Renters and buyers waiting for new supply at the affordable end should expect the squeeze to extend well into 2027, with the Pacote Fiscal Habitação doing its work on the demand side rather than the permit side.
Renovation and rehabilitation: non-residential and rehabilitation work tracks the +11.2% construction-credit reading more closely than the licensing series. Quotes for property renovation should remain available without a wait list through the summer, though VAT-treatment disputes between the Autoridade Tributária and contractors over the 6% reduced rate remain a recurring friction point.
Public-works tracking: the 26% drop in tenders is the leading indicator for the construction backlog 12 to 18 months ahead. Anyone planning to buy a new-build close to a publicly procured infrastructure project — a Metro extension, a school refurbishment, a hospital block — should expect timelines to slip rather than compress.
Cement-cost passthrough: the 26% volume rebound at the cement gate typically lags into retail-construction quotes inside 60 days. Builders quoting renovation work in Lisbon, Porto and the Algarve through June should be on the stable side of the cement price line; quotes received after July are the ones to recheck against the AICCOPN series.