In March, new business in German industry collapsed more than it had since the peak of the corona crisis.
(Photo: dpa)
Berlin The mood in the German export industry deteriorated noticeably in May. The barometer for export expectations fell to 1.8 points from 6.5 points in April, as the Munich Ifo Institute announced on its company survey on Thursday.
This is the lowest value since November 2022. “The global interest rate increases are slowly affecting demand,” said the head of the Ifo surveys, Klaus Wohlrabe. “The German export economy lacks dynamism.”
In the automotive industry in particular, export plans have been hit hard: after noticeable increases had recently been expected, companies are now anticipating a decline in exports.
Manufacturers in the metals and textiles sectors are also assuming that foreign sales will fall. In the chemical industry and among manufacturers of electrical equipment, the positive and negative prospects are currently more or less balanced. “The manufacturers of devices for data processing and the clothing manufacturers, on the other hand, are optimistic about the development of their foreign business,” according to the Ifo Institute.
In the fight against high inflation, the central banks of many industrialized countries have increased their key interest rates significantly. This makes loans for investments – for example in vehicles and machines – significantly more expensive.
This in turn slows down the economy in many important customer countries such as the USA, which German exporters are feeling more and more. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) only expects global growth of 2.8 percent this year.
This is not enough, especially since the prospects for the next few years are not much better either, said IMF boss Kristalina Georgieva recently. But now the task must be to overcome the phase of comparatively low growth rates coupled with persistently high inflation.
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