WELLINGTON, Aug. 30 (Xinhua) -- Hospitals and universities are driving New Zealand's continuing construction boom as house building slows, despite a continued housing crisis, figures from the government statistics agency showed Tuesday.
Investment in schools, universities, and hospitals helped lift the overall value of planned building work excluding housing by 1 billion NZ dollars (724 million U.S. dollars) in the year to the end of June, according to Statistics New Zealand.
Non-residential building work valued at 6.3 billion NZ dollars (4.56 billion U.S. dollars) was consented in the June, up from 5.3 billion NZ dollars (3.83 billion U.S. dollars) in the July in 2015.
Education buildings accounted for half of the increase, with health buildings contributing a quarter, business indicators senior manager Neil Kelly said in a statement.
Other significant areas of activity this year include prisons and airports.
Meanwhile, the number of new homes consented fell 11 percent in the month of July, partly reversing a 22-percent spike in June.
In actual terms, 2,811 new dwellings were consented, down 0.5 percent from July 2015.
