The U.S. financial crisis spread rapidly to the rest of the world during the second half of the year, slowing the global econo-my and rolling back construction inflation in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and North America. In particular, the economic slowdown in China has taken away one of the main drivers of global construction inflation as China's once voracious appetite for raw materials evaporates. The average building costs in Western Europe fell from 4.9% last year to 3.5% in 2008, while building inflation in Eastern Europe fell from 9.4% in 2007 to 5.3%, according to London-based international project and cost management firm Gardiner & Theobald Inc. in its seventeenth annual survey of international costs conducted exclusively for ENR.
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