The fashion retailers expect delivery problems for more than a year.
(Photo: IMAGO/Arnulf Hettrich)
Berlin German retailers fear delivery problems for a whole year. These could last until mid-2023, as the Munich Ifo Institute found out in its monthly survey published on Wednesday. In June, 75.7 percent of retailers complained that not all the goods ordered could be delivered.
In May it was even 80.1 percent. “This year, too, there will be gaps in the shelves at Christmas,” says Klaus Wohlrabe, head of the Ifo surveys. “The delivery problems have become an ongoing problem for retailers.”
The bicycle dealers expect the longest duration of the delivery problems with 18 months. Car dealers also assume that the bottlenecks will continue for more than a year. The same applies to furniture dealers. The clothing industry (9 months) and supermarkets (8.2 months) expect the gaps on the shelves to end more quickly.
The situation for groceries has eased a bit: After almost all reported problems with procurement in May, in June it was still around 77 percent. The proportion of clothing retailers also fell by almost 10 percentage points, from 64.5 to 54 percent.
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One reason for the problems might be the congestion of container ships in the North Sea. According to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW), more than two percent of global freight capacity is stuck there.
The queue is also growing in front of the Chinese ports of Shanghai and Zhejiang – where corona lockdowns hampered loading and unloading for weeks: more than four percent of global freight capacity is stuck here. China is by far Germany’s most important trading partner: in 2021, goods worth 245 billion euros were sent back and forth.
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