UK among dearest places to build in

The UK took its place among the priciest places for construction alongside Denmark, Greece, Sweden and Switzerland in a report on costs in 2006 from Faithful+Gould.

The five least expensive countries to build in were found to be China, India, Malaysia, Thailand and the UAE. However, the UAE also had the highest inflation, at 15-20%. This was put down to its highly active construction market.

Germany, Greece and the US also had higher inflation, but were still trailing the UAE relatively, at 5-8%, 7-8% and 4-6% respectively.

Average year-on-year construction price inflation fell from 4.7% last year to 4% this year. Inflation in the UK was put at 4-5%. Regionally, inflation was over 6% in the Americas, nearly 5% in Asia/Pacific and over 3% in Europe.

India was found to be the very cheapest country to build in. It replaced Malaysia, which came in at the cheapest in the 2005 survey, although India was not included in last year's research. Inflation in India was relatively low, at 2-3%.