China to be world's top construction market in 10 years: study

China will overtake the US as the world's largest construction market by 2018, with an industry size of about $2.4 trillion and a 19.1 per cent share of the global construction output, market analyst Global Construction Perspectives and Oxford Economics said in a joint study.

According to the Global Construction 2020 report released by Oxford Economics in London, China's construction industry would be about four times larger than India's at the end of the next decade.

"The construction market in China is already enormous at almost double the size of its nearest rival Japan. The US has for some time held the top spot but, despite its strong predicted growth over the next decade, China will become the world's largest construction market by 2018," Mike Betts of Global Construction Perspectives said at the launch of the report.

Yet, India as also Nigeria will see even higher growth rates in construction industry than China in the 2009-2020 period, the study pointed out. China would only rank third in terms of rate of growth.

Although India is expecting a construction boom with several infrastructure projects on the anvil, China's market will grow to 3-4 times larger than India's at the end of the next decade because of its sheer size, the China Daily said quoting the report.

This is also in contrast to a slow growth in housing construction in China, perhaps the slowest for several years.