An estimate agreed in spring no longer adds up against suppliers’ invoices by autumn — and that’s not an accountant’s mistake, but the result of a surge in construction material prices that has picked up speed across the whole country this year. Since the start of 2026, prices for core building materials have risen 30–50% depending on category, and the pace is only accelerating.
For a construction industry carrying the rebuilding of schools, hospitals and roads on its shoulders, this isn’t a line in an economic report — it’s a daily puzzle. Public procurers fix budgets in advance, contractors price their estimates at the rates in force when a tender bid goes onto Prozorro — and prices keep climbing while the procurement procedure runs its course. Both sides end up losing: a community risks getting no bids at all at the announced sum, while a contractor risks taking on a project at a loss.
The Price Surge in Numbers
State Statistics Service data shows just how much: over the past year, producer prices for industrial output, which includes construction materials, rose 39.1%. In April this year, industrial inflation peaked at 40.2% year-on-year — the highest reading in the past twelve months.
In real money, that looks like this:
- a standard 25 kg bag of cement costs, on average, UAH 180–200 in September;
- ordinary brick runs about UAH 14–18 apiece;
- rebar — the backbone of every reinforced concrete structure, from a school’s foundation to a hospital ward’s ceiling slab — has shown the steepest rise;
- in Q2 2026, prices for new-build apartments rose 20.5% year-on-year — the sharpest jump in five years, with construction materials among the main drivers;
- manufacturers warn that by year-end, materials and engineering equipment prices could add another 10–20%, depending on category.
Why the Estimate “Drifts” Faster Than the Tender Procedure
It isn’t just general inflation. Cement, brick and rolled metal prices are all being squeezed at once by logistics, energy costs and the exchange rate. Industry associations of construction material producers warn bluntly: any additional rise in transport tariffs feeds straight into finished-product prices, stacking on top of an already high producer price index. And since most public construction tenders don’t close in a single day, the gap between the price at the start of procurement and the price when materials are actually delivered can turn out to be significant.
What This Changes for Public Construction Tenders
For a contractor working with public procurement, the conclusion is simple: an estimate drawn up today may prove too low in a few months — not from a miscalculation, but from the market. Experienced companies are already building price-adjustment mechanisms into contracts and trying to lock in the cost of key items — cement, rebar, steel structures — at the bid-preparation stage rather than after winning the tender.
For communities and public procurers, the conclusion is different: when planning budgets for schools, hospitals and roads, it’s worth building in a margin for rising material costs upfront, rather than revising the estimate mid-project — otherwise an announced tender simply risks finding no contractor at the old price. This is especially acute for communities outside the big cities, where the pool of contractors willing to take the risk at a fixed price is already limited.
The country’s reconstruction continues despite these challenges — it just now demands more precise accounting. At SpecServis, that’s long been part of daily practice: counting ahead, not after the fact.
Read also
- New Procurement Rules in Construction from September 1
- VAT-Exempt Procurement: Prozorro Introduces New Rules for Construction Tenders
- Dynamic Pricing in Construction: How to Terminate a Construction Contract Without Financial Loss
SpecServis expertise on this topic: Design and Construction of Public Facilities
Source: MY.UA
