Berlin, Feb 12 (DPA) German economic recovery stagnated as 2009 came to an end, data released Friday confirmed – registering no fourth quarter economic growth over the third quarter of that year.
This comes after the economy notched up a healthier 0.7 percent growth rate during the third quarter.
Analysts considered the year-end results to be a blip in German economic recovery, which they expected would pick up again in early 2010.
“The state of the German economy is far better than it seems from a statistical perspective,” said Andreas Rees, a political economist with UniCredit.
The chief political economist at Commerzbank, Joerg Kraemer, said December’s figures were also affected by a quirk of the calendar, which meant industry closures over the Christmas period fell fully into the 2009 accounting period.
“That squeezed industrial production,” Kraemer said, adding that industrial orders showed an upward trend.
The figures also confirmed that the German economy collapsed by 5 percent in 2009, making it the worst recession Europe’s largest economy has experienced in its 60-year history.
Growth was expected to pick up by around 2 percent in 2010 – although Kraemer warned that financial difficulties in peripheral eurozone countries, such as Greece, would slow growth toward the middle of the year.
The latest gross domestic product data from the nation’s statistics office comes in the wake of a round of figures which have painted a mixed picture of the country’s economy as 2010 gets underway.
German exports increased in December by a surprise 3 percent, to record their fourth consecutive monthly gain and their first annual rise since October, the statistics office said Tuesday.
Seasonally adjusted German exports increased by 3.4 percent in December, compared with the same month in 2008, underscoring predictions that the nation’s export machine will emerge as the key driver of growth this year.
Month-on-month imports had risen by a strong 4.5 percent.
However, industrial production slumped by 2.6 percent in December and key factory orders dropped by 2.3 percent, the ministry of economics and technology said earlier this month.
This came after the ministry revised upwards the November figure to show an increase of 2.7 percent compared with an original estimate of a 0.2 percent rise in November.
Meanwhile, unemployment jumped in January amid concerns about the threat of a new wave of job cuts undercutting private consumption in the country.
The country’s labour office said the numbers out of work in seasonally adjusted terms rose by 6,000 to 3.429 million, consequently bringing to an end six consecutive monthly falls and pushing up the jobless rate to 8.2 percent.
That said, business leaders entered the new year on a positive note, with a key industry confidence survey hitting an 18-month high in January.
The government expects the nation’s economy to expand by 1.4 percent in the coming 12 months, after it contracted by a dramatic 5 percent last year in the wake of the global recession.
However, many economists think the country’s growth rate could top 2 percent this year as global demand for German goods picks up speed. Berlin expects exports to rebound by 5.1 percent this year.
