Joseph's here. We can begin. Good morning to you all, particularly those who I was not able to greet personally. Thanks for finding a spot between your probable visit to Saint-Gobain this morning and your possible leaving on holiday later on. A big innovation as compared to our six months meeting. Six months ago, Grégoire Thibault has changed places. We don't plan to hire all of you, let that be said. We wouldn't have enough space in our offices. We're very pleased to have Grégoire Thibault on board as Investor Relations Officer. We said it would be close to showing you photographs because you don't like figures. Let's start with some photographs. This is a photograph that symbolizes our ability to adapt to very different cultural settings.
It's a pre-opening of a significant Catholic steel and oak temple. The characteristic of this picture, as you see on the left, a man slightly taller than the others. Your mentor, you see that he's really adopted the Japanese culture with the traditional dress and the hammer on the drums. The photograph symbolizes the takeoff of electric vehicles in France. This is the Corridor Project Consortium led by EDF that plans to invest in 200 rapid charging stations. There are several stations, and a rapid charging station has power of 350 kilowatts and can charge a vehicle such as this in about eight minutes. The Corridor Consortium is investing in 200 rapid charging stations on the major highways, and actually 72 on VINCI Highways network. Vinci supplementing this investment through 14 additional charging stations.
We have other partnerships with local authorities to roll out charging stations, which are similar. Also tie up with the German consortium unit that can park the major car makes and also plans to invest several hundred rapid charging stations on the French network by 2020. All this just to illustrate the fact that it really is taking off because it was a catch-22 between the emergence of e-vehicles that was only possible as long as we had charging works and vice versa. We see things are really getting underway. Here, this is a bucolic view of Lima in Peru. We're not in charge of the development in Peru. We were just in charge of completing the works.
It was no mean feat from the technological standpoint of the second section of our land bank operation, a rather complex urban setting in the presence of a river that you can see on the slide, the Rímac. That is just a brook for 12, 10 months of the year and transforms into a torrent for two months of the year. We did this within 15 months, thanks to the very good control of geotechnical foundations technology through the presence of our affiliate Vinci in Mexico. The second section that extends the stretch to the southern part, 25 kilometers, was open on the 15th of June. This is VINCI Energies. This is where you'll be heading for your holidays. Winter from Scandinavia. The next photograph is the Assiut Dam in Egypt that we delivered during the course of the first half.
It's interesting because it follows up the High Aswan Dam that we delivered in 2009. (Inaudible) is significant on the outline. Back in 1985, as you know, as in Egypt, through a consortium, we built all the sections of the Cairo Metro, which is a huge city. We're historically rooted in this country through our construction activities. Next, a photograph that illustrates one of the Eurovia businesses in the U.S. Eurovia doesn't just apply bitumen in the U.S. It also takes on certain key deals, civil engineering, as you see on this slide. Still not forgotten, Vinci Real Estate produced this in a way, and here, a photograph of our new center for trend watching, foresight, incubation, accelerator, Léonard, that's near the Gare de Lyon in Paris. It opened a few months ago. It's working very well.
A very powerful forum, building on that address, this vast subject, which is rebuild the living city, on the city and under the city through 25, 27 rotations over six weeks. It's a magical setting and really a spur for creativity. That's for the essential. We nevertheless need to talk about the figures. What can we say? This first half was marked by strong growth in business, a strong increase in the group's results. Christian will detail them in a few moments. VINCI Autoroutes traffic growth held up very good. VINCI Airports benefit from very good momentum. Passenger traffic across our airports in contracting organic growth was sustained. In France, the recovery started in 2017 and continued international expansion with the integration of many new companies. I'll skip the figures because I don't want to repeat what Christian will say.
Next slide, just to show the picture in various geographies. You see the five European positions, the three boxes in the center are fairing well up. Developments in Asia, the U.S., OCE are very encouraging. Africa, unfortunately, keeps on faltering. Good news is that order intake on Africa is up sharply during the course of the first half. That seems to foreshadow an uptick in business in this region. VINCI Construction, VINCI Energies. If we go into further details starting with VINCI Airports, you see figures. Traffic growing almost 9% in Portugal, 9.5% in France, far more than the average French traffic levels. 23% once again, Canada. 8.7% in Japan. That is better than expected and what we had in our business plan. Italy, up over 10%. In Chile, that's very good.
What happened during the course of the half that now integrated Salvador Bahia Airport in Brazil, you know that it's the airport that serves the second largest tourist area in the country. We've also integrated and started operating Kobe Airport. That completes our two airports in the Osaka region, and we can continue to write our expansion story in Japan. Its traffic levels with good retail development, good cost containment that allows us to have this earnings improvement with the figures that Christian will detail in a moment. We still have in the pipe is what? Belgrade Airport in Serbia, 5.3 million passengers, 25-year concession contract signed, now we must do the financial close. That's expected towards the end of the year. Integration of the eight airports of Airports Worldwide.
A set of airports that we acquired a few months ago with Belfast International Airport, a freehold with a secondary airport in Stockholm, with several positions in the U.S., and a position at stake, slightly less than 50% in an airport in Costa Rica. The story continues. autoroutes, highways, firstly in France, good traffic level. 2% growth for light vehicles and 3.6% for heavy vehicles, continuing the trend seen last year, possibly even better. Over and above a whole number of disruptors, positive or negative, calendar, weather, social unrest, consequences of strikes at French railways, all this which is that economic conditions are now more favorable in France but also in Spain. That comes as news to no one. I'm mentioning Spain because you know that our networks are also very much dependent, at least for truck traffic, on the Spanish economy.
Two points to be noted on our French highway activity. We're right in the middle of the holiday season. People taking to the roads with improved services in our rest areas. We have a number of employees who volunteer and spend some of their holidays serving our customers. The launch of Ulys, which is the new brand of connected mobility of VINCI Highways with new live traffic information you can access via an app, information delivered by webcams. Also GPS, Sat Nav systems providing additional services. This is being prepared, an automated toll system that you can download on your smartphone that is based on the registration plate. Previously, when you hired a rental car, of course, you needed to take your Liber-t badge if you wanted to go through the automatic toll plazas.
With this, once you've picked up your rental vehicle, you just enter your registration number and you can go through with your iPhone as long as you don't forget to erase the registration number when you return the vehicle. Otherwise, you will continue to pay for the next person who rents the car. Outside France, we continue to roll out our model. I mentioned Peru, Colombia, where with our local partner, Conconcreto, we won a highway section northeast of Bogotá, some 120 km. We've obtained all the necessary authorizations, including the environmental green light. No easier than in France. We just started the works in Russia. As I said last time, we've become the number 1 highway operator, not necessarily concessionaire, with just under 1,000 km of highway sections in operation.
The good news is that the traffic on our section at the first section of Moscow, St. Petersburg, is very well. We had about 15% growth rate during the course of the first quarter. Maybe there's a World Cup effect. That's in the bag. We could perhaps say a word about our Greek assets. In Greece, we have a majority stake in the Rion-Antirion Bridge that we've been consolidating since the 1st of January 2018. That's 2008, rather. Good traffic levels. We've also operated the two sections where we have a smaller non-majority stake. It's important to note that now all our assets in Greece are in operation, which is a miracle after the severe crisis that affected the country. This is thanks to the great work of Christophe Pélissié du Rausas, who's with us. He's no doubt blushing.
He's done a job of work that the Greeks alone would not have been able to do, that is save the concessions in spite of the severe crisis that hit the country. Contracting, as I say, we're expanding actively internationally. On this slide, we just wanted to show you all the acquisitions over the past 18 months with a color code. Green, VINCI Energies, blue, Eurovia, VC in red. Something for everyone with different size companies. Seymour Whyte in Australia for VINCI Construction or PrimeLine to mention the most recent, which is key acquisition $300 million-$600 million in revenue by VINCI Energies, allowing it to gain a powerful foothold in the U.S. with the firm intention, as long as it's patient, to roll out a more significant part of our expertise in this hugely interesting region.
Order intake up well at VINCI Energies and Eurovia. This is in part due to recent integrations, but even if we leave aside these new acquisitions, there's a true organic growth of organic intake at VINCI Energies and Eurovia. At VINCI Construction, there are reasons that apply or explain what might appear like a subpar performance, that the unit size is far bigger at VINCI Construction. You have quarters with and quarters without Q1 2017. We booked a number of big deals as part of the Greater Paris project. It wasn't replicated Q1 2018. This means that the basis of comparison varies when you position over time significant projects. There are two other factors.
On the one hand, in areas of France that are overheating, notably the Paris region, where order books are very full, to focus on quality and margin rather than volume to avoid doing anything silly and a deliberate effort to reduce our order intake in the U.K. through VINCI U.K. If we go into the detail of the various businesses, VINCI Energies, you see bottom left, sees a return to organic growth. It was almost 0% organic growth same time last year. It now reaches 4.8%. We anticipated that. It's also far more top-line because there's the activity of the many acquisitions over the past 12 months. You can also see the bottom left, VINCI Energies achieves over a third of its revenue outside France. We crossed the threshold, 48% in France, 52% outside France.
VINCI Energies is benefiting from good trends in energy infrastructure due to the energy transition on the industrial segment, the modernization of production plants as part of the smart industry or the Industry 4.0 and everything that revolves around ICT, information and communications technology, central to its business. An EBIT margin coming in at 5.7%, which is the benchmark at VINCI Energies. It doesn't happen by accident. It's a positive result of good business discipline, the sign that the acquisitions that we made were right, they're not pressuring downwards our margin. Eurovia is fairly well, with strong organic growth in France, 6.8% organic growth in France, bottom left. Also 5.4% organic growth outside France. France is faring well, ditto for Poland, the Czech Republic, Canada.
Chile makes us realize that Eurovia must do a bit more M&A, a little but not a lot in France, so as to supplement the footprint of our business units more proactively in some European geographies, in particular Germany and the Baltics, focusing on growth in North America, U.S., and Canada. As you know well, the number top right must be taken with a pinch of salt, a heavy pinch of salt. It's meaningless because Eurovia activities are fundamentally seasonal in nature, and it's traditional to have a negative or zero margin in the first half. It doesn't at all mean that we plan to remain at this margin level full year. On the contrary, we expect the margin in Eurovia to continue to flourish positively compared to what it was, 3.7% in 2017.
Construction, always more difficult to summarize because it comprises a number of small, medium-sized, and large projects. There are a number of business activities involved. We need to go in a bit of detail. We can say that France is confirming the uptick in growth, 2.1% organic growth bottom left, like for like. We had it at that level in 2017, so we confirm a recovery in organic growth. It's important because we suffered sharp falls in previous years. In 2015, 2016, we're deliberately reducing, trimming our sales in the U.K. so as to focus on margin quality. Africa is delivering a drop in business. Good news is that order intakes are sharply up, so that seems to herald an uptick in business.
Oil and gas, particularly Entrepose's contracting in the midstream remain challenging given the fact that CapEx by large oil and gas majors are still at low, even very low levels. The only activity that's doing fairly well at Entrepose's contracting is oil and gas transportation with our subsidiary, Spiecapag, that still is doing a few deals. Otherwise, it remains challenging. Lastly, I'd like to note that good business in France, firm in Central Europe and in the Pacific region, where we benefit from the integration of Seymour Whyte that was acquired last year. Well, all this means stable activity. There are pluses and minuses, overall, stable business level with an encouraging increase in EBIT margin. A quick word on real estate property development that's doing well, that the house bookings grew significantly in 2017 versus 2016 of the order of some 20%, but still growing.
We've posted an increase of 4% in housing units reserved. It's probably the peak as we see it. Are we going to remain on a plateau, or is it going to trend downwards? We don't know, I don't think we can imagine that we continue to grow at this pace in property development for housing in the coming years. Good business in the corporate real estate segment, offices, hotels in the pipe, be it in Paris or London. Over to Christian, I'll say a couple of words about the outlook afterwards.
Thank you. Let's start with revenue, you'll see that it is growing at between 6% and 7%. In other words, Concessions and Contracting are running roughly neck and neck. You'll see that the origin is different because in Concessions, the rise in revenue is fueled essentially by organic growth, which is particularly strong in VINCI Airports at 11%, whereas in Contracting, the rise in revenue is driven mostly by external growth, here we're talking mainly about VINCI Energies. Organic growth in Contracting is at a level roughly comparable to what we noted last year at the same time, roughly 2%, but it depends on the divisions because growth has been kickstarted in VINCI Energies, +3% versus 0.
Remains high in Eurovia, +6%, you'll remember there was a very sharp drop in activity at the same period last year for Eurovia, whereas business is plateauing in VINCI, with -1% versus 2.8%. By geography, business has remained buoyant in France, with revenue being essentially linked to organic growth. There has been an increase in pace, almost 4% compared to 3%. I don't know if there's any particular conclusion to be drawn from this. Internationally, the rise in revenue is explained essentially by the integration of our most recent acquisitions, those made in 2017 and 2018. All in all, acquisitions represent roughly EUR 1 million additional revenue. The most significant items being VINCI Energies, Scandinavia, Infratek, Eitech, Horlemann, and PrimeLine in the U.S. and of course, Singapore. Seymour Whyte in Australia.
We have acquisitions in Canada, TNT, I forget which Baltic state, I think it's Estonia. VINCI Airports, Salvador Airport. It should also be noted that we have reconsolidated the Port of Kingston company, which is injecting additional revenue for the period. Conversely, there is a negative exchange impact because of the fact that the euro has risen versus virtually all currencies, in particular the dollar. Dollar is down 12% against the euro. Of course, our revenue realized is converted, so necessarily this means this in euros. At constant scope and Forex, the business is up slightly with variations depending on where you're talking about. Slight growth in Europe, +2%. The American continent is stable. Middle East and Africa, down. The outlook is up and Australia and New Zealand, as indicated. Now to the EBIT.
It is up to EUR 15 for the period, +11%, almost twice revenue. The basis point figure is not what it should be. It's +45 basis points. The same in both branches. Highways and airports are enjoying increased traffic, major part of our costs are virtually fixed costs. As to contracting, the EBIT to revenue ratio is also up by 40 basis points, +2.7% for the year as a whole. This is due essentially to VINCI Energies with 5.7% margin and progress in construction, 1.8%. However, Eurovia and Construction are not representative of the full year because there is a strong seasonal effect here. The major part of business being carried out in H2. The P&L. The current operating income, which includes increased spending in share payouts to staff members, this explains the EBITDA number.
We have increased the amount that we are contributing. There is an improved contribution from the other companies, the equitized companies, roughly EUR 100 million half year on half year. This is partially due to the good performance of some of the investments. I mentioned ADP, but also Japan and QDVC. There are some one-offs. We had to provision a concessions investment last year. This has not recurred. Cost of debt. The result of this is that cost of debt is down, but I'll be talking about that. The tax line has increased, which is to be expected. There is no longer any dividend tax to be paid out. This year, there is no dividend tax. There have also been some provisions for tax risk in certain countries and businesses. In all, net income up EUR 1.3 billion, a 26% rise.
If we correct for all of the one-offs that I just mentioned, the increase is roughly the same order of magnitude as our net income. It would have been 11%, in other words. Cost of finance. On a 12-month basis, you'll find, of course, all the details in the annexes, debt is up EUR 1.1 billion for the period, essentially due to external growth, which has been highly active over the 12-month rolling period into 2018. Cash flow for the period. If we correct, free cash flow seems negative. In CapEx, there is a part concerning concessions, highways, and airports, which are not full-year CapEx. The free cash flow, not counting those effects, is actually EUR 300 million positive, which is not so bad. In view of working capital requirement variations, negative. This is attributable to several factors. First of all, strong seasonal business in Eurovia in particular.
Of course, naturally, there is a time lag before we receive payment. Also the fact that we're consuming down payments paid upfront and in the course of the project. This is also affecting WCR, because, essentially, we're talking about real estate, and real estate is an expense which affects WCR. All of this combined, plus perhaps the fact that our businesses are all paying more and more attention to receivables and payables, and if you don't pay in time, you are now subject to penalties in France. I don't know if you've been following our recent legislation. For the moment, we have not been penalized. We have to be pretty careful about WCR, it's good. It's the right form of cholesterol. It's the right form of WCR because it shows that essentially business cycle is favorable.
I mentioned the acquisition of new companies for over EUR 1 billion for the period, it's pretty active period for the period. All of this is reflected in the balance sheet with more capital employed, essentially fixed, in which there's CapEx when we invest. This is reflected at this part of the balance sheet. There's also equity being strengthened and at the same time, debt, which is increasingly long-term debt. Logically, it should be funded by long-term resources. We have been fully active on the markets over the period. Next slide. Firstly, a reminder that the rating agencies appreciate our policies. They have both given us A's, which in our line of business is relatively rare, S&P came with an enhanced predictive of upgrading us. They've at least given us a positive outlook. We issued two series of debt over the period.
The markets are now much more volatile than they were at the same period last year. This seems easy. We're getting great low long rates, but in fact it's very difficult because you have to be very watchful. The market opportunities open and close, windows open and close. We have a permanent watching brief. We have issued amounts as indicated, and 1.4% which we've swapped. With the short rates being extremely cheap, all of this has optimized the cost of our debt, which is below 2.5% on average for the period. Liquidity is high. It has dropped, which is normal for the period of the year, but it will be brought back up to pace for the rest of the year. The structure of debt between the fixed and variable part.
When I say variable, the variable part means a rate which is tagged to the Libor three or six-month rates. You imagine that this variable part exactly reflects cash on hand because we have a natural hedge between the cost of variable and the yield of our short-term operations and one year of EBITDA through June. EBITDA naturally is a bit seasonal, but it's roughly one year of EBITDA for concessions because we consider, and this has been empirically, if not scientifically proven, that there is a good match between interest rates and economic cycle growth and/or inflation to which our concessions are taken. Thank you.
Thank you. Briefly before moving to Q&A, what do we think of 2018? Nothing hugely original as compared to what we thought six months ago. Show you the first slide, pretty traditional that it showed two things, the last of 10 years growth on truck traffic that is only just emerging from the period of crisis, and back to the pre-crisis levels of 2008. Second lesson, the two lines, light vehicles, heavy vehicles, are trending in the right direction. Barring unexpected unforeseen events on the price of fuel, we're set to see our autoroute traffic grow of the order of 2017. Six months ago, I said 2017 slightly downwards. I would say 2017 slightly upwards because you've seen that we're slightly ahead in the first half. All that's second order.
On airports, trend in a similar vein, given what's in the pipe, will end the year with 45 airports under management. Vinci Airports is an aircraft with two very powerful engines. The first is the specific dynamics of our airports, and secondly, the countless opportunities to acquire new airports on the rise in a global level, and we have a number of deals currently in the pipeline. If we look at the way in which things are going to evolve for contracting, look at the order book, you see that it's at an all-time high, EUR 32.7 billion, well up over the previous year compared to what it was back in June 2017, with changes across businesses and geographies. Overall, it's faring very well. It's important to give our employees both visibility, also confidence.
In the contracting business, we only deliver good work as long as they're achieved in conditions of trust and confidence. We confirm the guidance that we indicated six months ago that summarized on this slide. I won't go through it in detail because I did it six months ago. All this led the board that met yesterday to decide to increase the interim dividend to EUR 0.75 per share, up 8.7 for the third consecutive year as compared to what it was last year at the same period, and the payment date, as shown here, is 8th of November. The group's in good shape. It's projecting itself into the future. It's undergoing transformation with the same strategic equation, increased share in concessions with, in particular, the gradual strengthening of the airports component depending on opportunities.
Just a figure you may have forgotten, the airports component represented 0.8% of our revenue back in 2013 and it now accounts for 3.8% of our total revenue. That's important because, of course, we have to identify the assets that are sometimes very expensive. We really have to go all out with the accelerated growth of VINCI Energies, due to many opportunities that are put to us as part of business consolidation globally, that is now our playing field. Of course, a quest for expansion at VINCI Construction, the most high-tech segments that offer the characteristic of having the highest international growth potential. I'm thinking of all the skill sets present in one of the key components of VINCI Construction. With everything I've said, all this should lead us to a gradual shift to a greater international presence. That's what we can say.
We're now available to take your questions, Christian will be reassured because he has a taxi waiting for the 12:30 show. We have 45 minutes for Q&A. Everything's doing well.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, dial one on your telephone keypad.
Thank you. Actually, I've got two questions. ADP, it comes as no surprise up until now, Vinci has been faithful to the doctrine. Think a lot about it and never discuss it. Can we say a few words about it, and can we perhaps unpack the margin increase of VINCI Construction, 40 basis points? Does this include clauses of return to better fortune? How's the U.K. trending and specialized construction, particularly VCGP and ? Thanks. Okay, I'll start by answering the first question and allow me to kick into touch so that Christian can answer the second question. ADP, actually, there's not much to say, if only the fact that ADP is clearly in the new PACTE law.
We see two things that we like, that is, the purpose of the government, is that the future shareholders or the future ADP shareholders should focus in particular on quality of service and the growth strategy for ADP. We seem to be ticking those boxes. However, there's not really much else to say. Why? Because we know that this PACTE law is currently going before Parliament, we know how it entered. We don't know how it's going to emerge. To our knowledge, the state hasn't yet decided how it's going to proceed. What seems certain is that the state is going to barge, but is it going to retain a golden share?
Is it going to offer the possibility to some of the major, many competitors to take possession of the whole of the state's stake, or is it going to salami slice it and authorize people like us or our peers to only have access to a few bits? We have no certainty about that. We are almost in the same situation as six months ago, although it has moved forward because it is in the draft law. The second thing is that we feel that the state, as part of this draft, which obviously needs to be refined as regards ADP, we clearly sense that the government has struck a balance between its interests for its own assets, also to demonstrate through this privatization, quote-unquote, there would be a strengthening of government control through a regulation contract that it would be even tougher as compared to what exists today.
We're used to that. We have a number of airports or other airports, I mean, highway concessions in France, that's good. If the government is comfortable with what's indicated in the draft law, that suits us. When will it emerge fully? I don't know. The timeline is largely dictated by political events. There are times when they have other fish to fry. There are times when there might be a window of opportunity, or maybe they don't need to put this on the table. I don't know. We're betting that it's going to emerge, but how? We still don't know. The construction results, it doesn't really pay to try and interpret the thing of June 30th last year, 1.4% June 30th under 2017, we delivered 2.5% full year. I don't know if it's going to be the same gap between H1 2018 and full year.
We have a slight idea, but we don't necessarily want to discuss it now. The same thing, we have VINCI Construction France that continues to recover. Last year was negative in H1, but positive full year. Here, we're slightly positive in H1, so we hope that things will improve. Full year, we have international subsidiaries that are continuing to fare well. Africa, in spite of revenue that's down, the earnings figures are good. Ditto in other geographies, Eastern Europe, Oceania. We have continues to post good results. U.K., that's flat. It's actually back to break even a bit more. There'll never be miracles in the U.K. for us, but we're back in the blue. Entrepose's slightly negative. That's unfortunately the situation for Entrepose today, in spite of the good speed back up and the good major projects delivering a pretty stable result as compared to what they normally do.
That's what I can say rather than going to the figures that don't really make much sense. June 30th, somewhat a slightly positive impact as a function of the application of the new accounting rule that you may have heard about, IFRS 15, but we believe that full year IFRS 15 will have a pretty much neutral effect. IFRS 15 is a rule that henceforth compels us to be very cautious as to the way in which we book into our accounts proceeds on business that hasn't been fully contracted. When we do additional work, we present a variation order to our client, as long as they're not nailed down set in concrete, a 95% chance of things going well, we can no longer as we do, book that as revenue, as earnings. There's an adjustment in the net situation that is positive in our favor.
What's negative is that we're even more cautious than we were. For the half, it's slightly positive. Full year, it should be pretty much neutral.
I have two questions, before the questions, could I simply wish best of luck to Grégoire Thibault in his new job. On roadworks, there's been a lot of talk of delay, particularly in works in the east of France. I felt that it was essentially Colas, or I heard that it was essentially Colas that were penalized. Have you been penalized, and if so, will this have an impact on H2? Second question, do you have more visibility as regards local taxation, the taxe d'habitation, municipal taxes?
Very simple for both. The answer is no to question two. I have no particular insight. If somebody does in the room, I'm very interested in what you have to say. We don't have much influence. As to the second question, my colleague will answer. Yes, on roadworks. Yes, there's been a lack of material, a lack of asphalt. Some projects have been affected by this, not significantly at this juncture. The central thing is to come to grips with the problem early in the day and observe what the rest of the industry is doing upstream and downstream the transportation system, and to work hand in hand with the Transportation Ministry. They are aware of the problem. We have a team to coordinate with the ministry. The causes have been analyzed.
There seems to be a Gaussian build-up. At the same time, on paper, there is no reason to believe that it will go on indefinitely. I don't see any significant impact for the Eurovia financials as we speak.
Person behind you before that. I think he has the mic right. Two questions, one on VINCI Energies. It seemed difficult to go below 5.5% EBIT margin. You posted a very positive plus 20-point performance for H1. I know you don't like to propose comments on H1. Could you expand on that? Can we expect a similar performance on a full year basis? Secondly, on Greater Paris, are you expecting any good news for H2?
I shall speak very briefly. Hand over to Yves for question one. I'll ask Jérôme to answer the second one.
When we take in a new organization, obviously, this is going to some extent, drag down the operating income because they have to be brought into line. And this temporary drop in margin caused by an acquisition is offset by the profitability of the companies who were already within Vinci Energies. If tomorrow we were to put a stop to acquisitions, which would be dumb, because there are lots of opportunities out there, obviously, we would be quoting a higher margin than 5.7. The second point is that, I feel that Vinci Energies is getting pretty close to rounding up the 5.7 to 5.8. But we've been working on it for several years now, and I think we're now pretty close to the objective. Yves, want to add something?
Well, for 15 years, our margins have either remained stable or risen, multiplied revenue by three. Why change? We did a little better in H1, despite all of the external acquisitions. France is doing very well. There will come a day when we will overstep the 5.7 mark. Greater Paris, Jérôme. Well, there are 2 lines, 16.2 and 17.1, which are up for tender. 16.2, which was to be attributed in 2017, will in fact be attributed at the end of 2018. I have no more fresh about it. And on 17.1, information from Robert is that it should be for this year, but it may be postponed to the beginning of next year. Much for Greater Paris. The planning process is longer than originally intended. Vinci Airports. Firstly, question of ANA. That's a remarkable expansion.
Secondly, how do you manage to have growth 2 times as fast in France as the legacy operator? Is it a question of traffic? The second question is on contracting. Their margin is up by 40 points. Do you expect to do as well on a full year basis? You said that you're more interested in quality, in other words, margin than in quantity. With a drop in available labor, are you affected by that issue today, and what do you intend to do about it? Nicolas, on the first question. Margins, as you would have observed, are up everywhere. EBIT is up from 40.5 to 43.4, and for the period, 59.5. Obviously, this is not ANA. ANA is up with good traffic levels. This year traffic is up by 8.9% versus a 9.3% average. It's a strong flagship, but it's not the only one.
The trend is a rise in margins. It is roughly the same everywhere. Half of the EBIT growth is coming from ANA, the other half is coming from elsewhere. For the equitized results, Japan is far above expectation, and same for Cambodia, 3.7%. It's very regular. On France, there are 2 things affecting France. First of all, the regional platforms, which we manage, Lyon, Nantes, but also Rennes, have been opening new lines at a very fast rate. We have been contributing to this with both traditional and low-cost companies participating. That is the first trend. Our people have been very effective. But in Lyon, for instance, we're well ahead of the 2-year forecasts of our business plan. And this is also a European momentum, and we're part of it.
We put a lot of effort into creation of new lines so that on average, we tend to be above market, because traffic growth also means that money is being spent in the boutiques and that we have cost control, which helps for EBITDA. Good revenue trend, and all of this gives rise to the value you saw in the figures. On the second part of your question, breaking it down, VINCI Energies is going to produce what they've been doing for several years now. Margin rates give or take 10 points, you know. Eurovia, I mentioned earlier on, is going to continue to improve margin, and construction is also going to improve its margin. The second point, shortage of labor.
I don't know who wants to field that one, that is a really difficult issue. In some of the areas, geographies we work in Germany, for instance, it is becoming quite serious in some businesses and in some geographies, it is becoming an issue in France. We know how to address this type of issue. In other words, we pick up the pace of the hiring process, and Jérôme will tell you how we were able to step up the pace of hirings in the Greater Paris projects. Yes, there is a labor shortage in some geographies, including, surprisingly enough, in Poland, where we have workers coming in from a little further eastward. We have training programs across the board for Greater Paris. We have a project called The City Under the City, which is training hundreds of workers at all levels of the hierarchy.
Also hydro drillers. Some of the heavy plant requires specialized operators and drivers. In some cases, it takes 12 to 18 months before we can put an operator onto a machine, which itself costs a fortune. We've been able to step up the pace by means of digital simulators, which reenact exactly what happens within the operating cabin. This means that we've been able to train people within a period of three months, simply because we can test all sorts of situations which we can't test in real life. We have operators who are able to come up with the right reaction to unforeseen issue or technical difficulty. The idea, obviously, is that we should be able to feel reasonably sanguine about this labor shortage. At the moment, we don't feel too much under threat.
Great. Next question.
The first one is related to the dividend. Should we wait for a similar dividend growth for the full year, assuming the big gap that we have between EPS growth and dividend growth for the first half, which is 20% on one side and 8.6% on the other? The second question is to the net working capital. Should we wait for an improvement of the size, a reduced size in the net working capital absorption by the year-end as in last year, or we should expect the same trend for the next six months? The last question is related to Nice. Nice Airport regulation has moved from a hybrid to a deep, to an almost pure dual till system with a tariff cap. Should we wait for a similar change eventually for ADP?
You put your headphone on, I will answer in French.
Okay, I'll start with your last question. If you read the draft law, the PACTE draft law, you'll have seen that we can say there's a hardening, a toughening of regulation in terms of conditions, in terms of the principles. After that, the devil's in the detail. There's the fact that we have ring-fence the adjusted single or dual till system on ADP. Nicolas, you agree with that? The regulation of ADP, because that's your question, will be rather more stronger, robust than it was up till now because the PACTE law, as long as it's not amended during the course of its process before parliament, ring-fences the principle of the system as it exists today. On the dividend, it's very simple.
Yes, of course, the dividend full year isn't going to grow by 26% as on the face of it, our net earnings seem to have grown in H1 for a simple reason. Christian has explained that. The other things being equal of our performance of net income in H1, I don't know if you gave the number, but it's more of the order of 11%, not 26%. Second point is that we're consistent. We have a payout policy that's been consistent now for a number of years, with a payout ratio of 50% of our net income by way of dividends. Generally, we ensure that the indication given in terms of the increase of the interim dividend begins to give an idea of the way in which the full dividend for the full year might behave. WCR, do you want to speak to that? Yes.
I certainly won't want to give a WCR forecast. There's a couple of dates of receipts, and that's EUR 300 million contracting. Things move fast in both directions. Average WCR on one of the board trends, I explained earlier that one of the drivers for WCR increase was VINCI Energies and Eurovia. We're not banking on a drop in VINCI Energies, Eurovia for the rest of the year. We can expect that the same causes producing the same effects, negative effects, we consume via WCR when we increase the activity of Eurovia. It's less clear VINCI Construction, it depends how they're structured in terms of down payments. We're nowhere in terms of major projects in VINCI Construction. If we look at sites in Greater Paris, we've completed big deals internationally, notably in Russia, Ukraine, and Hong Kong. We're not expecting to bet.
Jérôme will correct me if I'm wrong, and Qatar. We're not expecting to receive the big down payments on deals before the end of the year. That doesn't militate in favor a very significant improvement at WCR between now and the end. Of course, there will be a natural shift because the said seasonality in receipts and spending is pretty marked. I don't know if that's answered your question. That's how I see things today. I won't promise a WCR improvement full year, given the information available to me. Once again, a couple of days of receipts, and it can shift the complete EUR 300 million. If you've understood what Christian said, he probably virtually misspoke. No, actually, the aim was for you not to understand. Those of you who wanted to understood, have understood. Kepler Cheuvreux, Joseph. Question on ADP.
Will there be possible scenarios where you would not go, no-gos for you that would be a blockage? We don't know if it's going to be sold as a block or in several chunks. If you end up with a small chunk, quote-unquote, would you still be interested? The second scenario, at one point, Mr. Bruno Le Maire, the minister, made statements a couple of weeks, talking about this PACTE law before parliament, saying that if ever we don't agree with the concession, we can't strike a deal, we'll unilaterally set the tariff hikes. If things were to pan out that way, we'll see what the end. If things were to happen like that, would you go for it or is it not worth taking that risk? Joseph, it's impossible to take just one-off item.
The day the PACTE law has emerged from the parliamentary process and the day with this law on the statute book, the administrations have crafted the spec sheet, and we get that spec sheet. Of course, the terms, we can answer those questions, but there are too many unknowns. I'll give you a small indication. Let's assume that they offer small chunks and that we derive from this strategy the fact that for us, there's no chance of one day controlling ADP. At that point, we can draw conclusions. If, on the other hand, the sales are small chunks, but it's our sense that it's only a stage and that in due course, there's a possibility of playing a more controlling role, the answer can be somewhat different.
All that can only be truly analyzed the day we have the details, especially on the contracting clauses, the regulation clauses, and the way in which the state plans to proceed. Because on the tariff business, the current rules, very healthy, grandpa would say healthy, in large part, ADP tariffs are based on the amount of CapEx with a return on the basis of regulated assets with a WACC and an ROC that is to the ROC slightly below the WACC. That is the logic. We cannot imagine that the state will compel people to invest and at the same time compel that there is no tariff increase on a par with that investment. Because that would be totally specious through a simple. There are principles, the devil is in the details. We are calmly waiting to see what emerges from the process.
Christian wanted to add perfidiously, those who understood what I said, is that what you were about to say? No. This ADP business, we know it is dragging its feet. There is a clear sense. Are they going to act? It is not absolutely certain because they say there can be political considerations such that they may find that the time is not right. You know that when you are at the beginning of a presidential term of office, you can push a number of things through, but after a while, the leeway shrinks or narrows. There may be events today, that there is not a political window of opportunity in a sense that they can go for it. In the meantime, we continue to expand VINCI Airports, looking at many other issues, because there is more to life than ADP.
Ladies and gentlemen.
No more questions. If there are no more questions from the floor, we will take questions over the phone in French. We will start with French questions. We have a question from Elodie, JPMorgan. How are you? Hello. Thank you for taking my questions. One of the few On contracting. First off, you mentioned the pickup the business in Africa. What are the margins that you are expecting or hoping for in this region? How do they compare with the margins in Europe? First question. Second question, what inflation do you see, cost inflation do you see in your contracting business? And have you got provisions in the majority of your contracts? And third question, do you see constraints in terms of labor resources, in terms of contracting? Right. Thank you, Elodie. Third part of the question, we have already answered that. Jérôme answered fairly completely.
Yeah, there are parts of the world, notably certain European countries, where there's tension on the labor front. That, of course, we can manage that type of situation by putting in place recruitment processes and training acceleration as to offset those shortages. If I say we're used to that, it's not the first time that it's affected us. In this particular phase, countries such as Germany were in fact ahead of the curve. It's been a while in Germany. We're in a tight, constrained environment in terms of access to labor. You say that, jokingly, that we acquire companies, sometimes not given the quality of the business franchise, but given the quality of the labor we find in the company, which is something we don't do when we're opposite position, where we have a surplus headcount. We've answered that. The question about inflation, cost inflation.
You have to understand that in our contracting business, either you're on projects that are fairly modest and short-term, in which case, we don't really have the time to be positively or negatively impacted by price variation. As soon as the deal is signed, you have to deliver within a few months. Or we're on far longer-term contracts, in which case we have price escalation clauses that allow us to be compensated. These formula baskets that include labor, price of oil, et cetera, that allow us to even things out. Turnaround in Africa. Before the crisis brought about by commodity and oil prices, we used to have margins in Africa that were much higher previously, double digit. These margins have suffered because we can't continuously have a drop in business, 34% in business, sometimes 60% in some African countries, and maintain such high margins.
Margins in Africa have remained higher than the average margins of VINCI Construction. Looking at Jérôme quickly, significantly higher. We're less strong in margin than we were, but we remain very good in terms of margin in Africa compared to the whole of VINCI Construction. If Africa is turning around, it's going to have a double positive effect on VINCI Construction, both linked to volume and that margin is generally better than the average activity of VINCI Construction. Nabil Ahmed from Barclays. Yeah. Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I actually had two questions and two sort of follow-ups of understanding on the half yearly results and some more strategy-focused questions. First on EBITDA, you mentioned the increase in the share-based payments that accounts for the large part of the EBITDA margin in the first half. Is that housed in the holding column?
If I look at slide 78, the plus 36 that becomes -24. Is it in the businesses? Could we perhaps have some color on the EBITDA margin drop of contracting in H1? On EBITDA in VINCI Airports, you're going to say that I'm not-- Actually 12% growth in revenue, 13% growth in EBITDA. We used to better in terms of operational leverage from the airports unit. I know there are scope effects, but aren't there also a step up, a cost step up that would account the sluggish growth in the margin? Final point on VINCI Airports, opening above ADP. In the past, you mentioned opportunities in India, that you also have a framework agreement for certain assets in Iran. What's the situation on those two markets or other countries where you see looming opportunity for expansion? Nicolas, you want to answer that?
Only. That is why we regularly sign MOUs several years ahead of time. Of course, those that we are signing now have not yet given rise to a contract, particularly in Iran. There is no activity at all going on in those countries. Obviously for the rest, we are not going to tell you what we have in the pipeline. EBITDA of airports and the cumulative EBITDA of its component entities, there are no two of them that are comparable. It is all a matter of mix and how we dovetail EBITDA from the various participating entities, therefore, not necessarily a linked revenue. Salvador, when we have an external integration with obviously a margin which is going to be a little below average, the change in EBITDA of each of the participating entities is going to be significant because we take traffic.
We have a slightly negative Forex effect in all of the dollar geographies. Obviously, there is going to be a drop. Standalone, each entity is going to have the EBITDA, which rises significantly. On total EBITDA, you are right not to isolate the holding company from the rest, because obviously, there is a connection between the two. The income for the holding company should be attributed on a pro-rata basis for it to be meaningful. The explanation I gave earlier was for the entire variance, EUR 100-odd billion coming from the fact that we have cash outflows, which have been higher for this period than last year. In other words, the check we write for the employee share purchase plan, because the available amount for each individual has gone up, and it happens that the share price was more attractive during this period than for the same period last year.
More attractive in the second half of the year. People tended to subscribe at the end of the year last year, rather than the first half of the year, meaning that our contribution is going to vary accordingly. Since I think that a lot of staff members bought up a maximum of their capacity, for H1 2018, probably we are going to be facing slightly reduced outgoings in that respect for the second half of 2018. I hope it was clear this time. If you want to attribute it to the divisions, compare the numbers of staff members for each entity, and that will give you an idea of the probable variance.
Thank you. Further questions? You are entitled to a question in English before you zip away on your taxi. Another question in French from Nicolas Mora from Morgan Stanley, I believe. Hello there. Three questions, just like to return to VINCI Airports for Nicolas, this one. We have understood the first half there was a provision, right back on TAP. The purposes of comparison was clearly improved and contrary to what I think the performance this year tends to be rather excellent. Once again, can you tell us if there are other one-offs or other provision reversals in the first half this year in the airports? Secondly, we note in the cash flow a big rebound in CapEx for contract. Is this something that we can extrapolate full year and into 2019, or is it linked to some big projects, the Greater Paris project in particular?
Thirdly, given the sharp increase in the contribution of companies consolidated in equity, can you give us a contribution of Kansai that reports annual figures end of March that were excellent, if you could give us the precise figure of the contribution to net income for the first half, that'd be nice. Thanks. Thank you, Nicolas. My colleagues will answer me those questions while I can take a break. Okay. Patrick.
Yes. We don't communicate on reversal of provisions because there are reversals. It's a two-way process. Overall, EBITDA performance is good if you take this into account, but it's not significant. EBITDA margin has risen from 56% to 59% for the quarter, and for this time of year, it is significant. We have 50 years ahead of us. On Japan, once again, no details there. As Xavier has said, we are ahead of our forecasts for traffic in Japan, particularly international traffic. Japan has decided to open up to tourism from China and Korea, the trend is 89% for Japan, which is much greater than the legacy trend, and certainly more than we had predicted in our business model. This has been the trend for about two, three years now. No specifics, but we're ahead of the business plan for Japan.
On CapEx, there was an increase in CapEx of about EUR 160 million for the period, EUR 50 odd for contracting directly related to business, EUR 100 obviously for the parent company and real estate. This is the new corporate HQ. The pace of events is picking up and the outgoings, therefore, accordingly. Eurovia, it was said was stable. Yes. There's the effect of Greater Paris plus Africa, there we've had a lot of earthworks CapEx. I talked about that with the impact of real estate. We're talking about CapEx and the new HQ. In one case, we're a property developer, in the other case, we're an investor. The investment is booked as CapEx. Perhaps one last question.
We have a final question from Bryan Garnier with you. Yes. Hi. Just a couple of quick ones. The first, on the latest motor, I mean, stimulus plan from autoroutes with the Conseil d'État and this stimulus plan, is it going to reduce with the increased cost of bitumen? They negotiated the plan at a time of oil prices are lower than the current level. Second question, on the digitalization of your job sites, where you are things accelerating on that front or not? Thanks.
Followed by Johan. On CapEx. This is scrutinized in depth by the public works sector of the Conseil d'État. The last meeting was held yesterday. It concerned the Cofiroute and Escota plans, and we don't have feedback yet because the Conseil d'État informs the government before releasing its conclusions. Five years ago, we would take one month to negotiate a plan. Now, it looks as if we're almost there. On the cost of bitumen and the impact on the overall cost, we're relatively sanguine. It's not significant. Particularly when you consider that as it is partially paid off by slight tariff increases, which themselves are tagged to the CPI, which itself is influenced by the price of oil, it's peanuts. Johan, digitalization. Proceeding quite swiftly. First of all, the BIM, which is now being rolled out on most of our sites.
Operationally, we have a digital site in-house tool, which is today used on over 300 work sites. It digitalizes basically all the data from the foreman, from the supervisory staff. We're testing much more cutting-edge technology, which should give us productivity deltas, but we'll no doubt be able to discuss that at a future meeting. The results for that are very promising. Thank you one and all for being with us. Thank you for taking part, and I wish you a very pleasant summer.