BERLIN, May 22 (Reuters) - Sales in Germany's construction sector may fall this year even in nominal terms, worse than earlier forecasts that they would be flat, the head of the HDB industry association was quoted on Friday as saying.
"Stagnation in 2009 would be something we'd be happy about," Herbert Bodner told Berliner Zeitung daily in an interview, saying a previous forecast of flat sales was likely too optimistic.
The HDB said in January that German construction sales would decline by around two percent in real terms in 2009, and would be roughly flat in nominal terms.
"At the moment, is there a sector that's showing stagnation? Almost all have been hit by serious sales decreases. We're also preparing ourselves for the fact that our forecast from the beginning of the year has been too optimistic," Bodner said.
"We had hoped to nominally keep 2009 sales at the previous year's level. But I can't believe in this zero any more, from today's point of view."
Bodner said the sector would probably only slowly feel the impact of the German government's economic stimulus packages.
"The bigger share of the 19 billion euros, which have been made available for investment in construction, is set to become effective only in 2010," he said.
Chancellor Angela Merkel's government has passed economic stimulus measures it says are worth 81 billion euros to help Europe's largest economy through the financial crisis. The government expects the economy to contract by 6 percent in 2009. (Reporting by Kerstin Gehmlich; editing by Stephen Nisbet)