Factory orders in Germany exceed expectations in February

The German Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) has announced provisional data on factory orders for February.

Thus, orders for products manufactured in the country increased 4.8 percent in February compared to the previous month, and decreased 5.7 percent compared to February 2022. The monthly increase was registered as the largest increase since June 2021. It should be noted that the increase in factory orders in the country led to the rise for the third consecutive month.

The market expectation for factory orders was an increase of 0.3 percent per month. In January 2023, there was a revised 0.5 percent increase in such orders.

In Germany, in February, a monthly increase of 5.6 percent in domestic orders and 4.2 percent in orders from abroad was observed.

LARGE-SCALE VEHICLE ORDERS HAVE BEEN EFFECTIVE

“Large orders (up 55.9%) in the manufacture of other vehicles, such as the manufacture of ships, rail vehicles, aircraft, spacecraft and military vehicles, contributed significantly to the positive development of order intake in February 2023 Destatis said in a statement.

In the said period, new orders from the Euro Zone increased 8.9 percent compared to January, and orders from other countries to Germany increased 1.4 percent.

In February, orders for manufacturers of intermediate goods rose 1.3 percent and orders for capital goods 7.3 percent on a month. Orders from manufacturers of consumer goods rose 1.9 percent.

Meanwhile, the German economy contracted 0.4 percent in the last quarter of 2022 compared to the previous quarter due to the energy crisis and record inflation.

THE DECLINE IN GDP IS EXPECTED TO CONTINUE

Although the bottlenecks that arose during the Covid-19 epidemic have eased, Europe’s largest economy is negatively affected by stagnant demand due to rising interest rates, declining confidence in the economy and the decline in consumer purchasing power at an unusually high level. inflationary environment.

Economists expect GDP to continue its decline in the first quarter of this year as Europe’s largest economy is technically in recession.

The technical recession is expressed as “two quarters of a GDP contraction”.

Germany experienced its first recession since 2009 in 2020, the first year of the Covid-19 outbreak after 10 years of good economic growth.

On the other hand, the German government expects 0.2 percent growth in the economy this year. (AA)