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Algeria
Construction
Algeria's chronic housing shortage, which has ranked high on
the government's priority list because of its social implications,
has had a consistent impact on the construction industry. The
population over the years has been unevenly distributed: about
87 percent of the population lives in the coastal and subcoastal
regions, which comprise 17 percent of the country's total area
(see Urbanization
and Density , ch. 2). The influx of Algerians moving from
rural areas into urban housing left vacant by the French and other
Europeans, coupled with rapid economic development and high birth
rates, has dramatically accelerated the pace of urbanization.
Government attention to housing was not evident, however, until
it was included in economic development plans in the 1980s. The
five-year plans for 1980-84 and 1985-89 outlined a number of objectives
for housing policies: reduction of construction delays, integration
of housing within social services designed to raise living standards,
control of expansion of housing developments to preserve agricultural
land, and sale of government-owned dwellings to their occupants.
In addition, the plans sought to improve the efficiency of the
construction sector and the financial institutions involved in
housing and to develop the construction material industry.
The seriousness with which the government viewed the housing
problem was underlined in 1992 when a new minister of housing
was appointed and assigned the responsibility of urban development
in addition to the traditional function of overseeing housing
construction. Even with governmental encouragement of manufacturers
of building materials to produce more, the public sector has been
unable to meet the constantly growing demand for new housing--estimated
at about 250,000 units a year. In 1993 there was a shortage of
2 million housing units. A major obstacle was a chronic shortage
of inputs in cement production, which was controlled by four regional
Enterprises for Cement and Derivatives (Entreprises des Ciments
et Dérives). Private-sector firms have been active, however, in
introducing prefabricated construction techniques under the umbrella
of the National Office to Promote Prefabricated Construction (Office
National de la Promotion de la Construction en Préfabriqué).
Data as of December 1993
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