Building value breaks quarterly record in New Zealand

The rebuilding of the earthquake- battered Canterbury region has helped push the value of all New Zealand construction activity to a record 4 billion NZ dollars (3. 1 billion U.S. dollars) in the quarter ending September, the government statistics agency announced Wednesday.
The total, up 22 percent year on year, included 2.5 billion NZ dollars (1.94 billion U.S. dollars) worth of residential building work, according to Statistics New Zealand.
"Overall building activity volume increased 1.5 percent in the September 2014 quarter, growing for the 10th quarter in a row," business indicators manager Neil Kelly said in a statement.
Non-residential building activity volume grew by 4.4 percent, and residential building activity fell by 0.7 percent.
"The trend for non-residential building activity has nearly reached the same level as the series high in the March 2006 quarter," Kelly said.
The trend for all building activity in Canterbury, which accounted for a quarter of the national total value in the September quarter, was nearly two-and-a-half times the level in the June 2010 quarter, the index base period before the first major earthquake in September 2010, but appeared to be flattening.
Across the rest of New Zealand, the total value trend had risen 21 percent over the same period.