The Budget: The real test is yet to come
Paul Hodgson, Business Development Manager at Bachy Soletanche, gives his views on the impact of The Budget on the engineering and construction industries.
The real effects of The Budget are going to take a while to come into fruition in terms of how they’ll affect the engineering and construction industries but I don’t think it’s all bad news. The announcement of Corporation Tax reduction will ultimately impact a business’ bottom line performance by potentially more than 1% and with current low profit margins this could also help the industry.
Whilst the reduction in public capital spending is unfortunate, after the recent announcement that no cuts will be made during this financial year I don’t think the real impact will be seen for a few years. Public sector projects have already signed off funding for this year so the workload of many companies and organisations should maintain at a consistent level, with the knock on effect impacting further down the line. The real test will come when public sector projects have no funding to allocate but hopefully the case will be that private, industrial and commercial work will have picked up by then to replace it.
All we can do is wait and see, and hope that the industry returns to its former heyday.