Munich / Frankfurt (dpa) – The fourth corona wave and delivery bottlenecks are dampening the prospects of an economic boom in Germany in the coming year.
Economic research institutes lowered their economic forecasts for 2022 on Tuesday and expect a hard winter for Europe’s largest economy. The mechanical engineering companies are nevertheless confident of reaching the pre-Corona level in the coming year.
“The ongoing delivery bottlenecks and the fourth corona wave are noticeably slowing down the German economy. The strong recovery initially expected for 2022 will be postponed further ”, said Timo Wollmershäuser from the Munich Ifo Institute, which lowered its economic forecast for the coming year by 1.4 points and is now assuming an increase of 3.7 percent. In return, the economy is expected to grow 1.4 points faster in 2023 than predicted in autumn and grow by a total of 2.9 percent.
Improvement in spring
The economic researchers left the forecast for the current year, downgraded several times, at an increase of 2.5 percent. In the corona crisis year 2020, the economy shrank by 4.6 percent.
Wollmershäuser still sees the effects of the pandemic in the winter half of the year in particular. But in spring there will be an improvement – also with the delivery bottlenecks. However, he sees clear risks, depending on how the infection process develops.
The Leibniz Institute for Economic Research Halle (IWH) takes a similar view. The institute expects the German economy to stagnate in winter due to pandemic waves and delivery bottlenecks. “From spring 2022, the number of infections is likely to continue to decline due to the season, and private consumption will expand significantly again,” said IWH Vice President Oliver Holtemöller. The institute expects the gross domestic product to increase by 3.5 percent in the coming year – after 2.7 percent this year. In September, the IWH was still assuming growth of 3.6 percent for 2022.
More risks in the face of the fourth wave
According to the Federal Ministry of Economics, the economic risks have increased in view of the fourth corona wave. Overall, economic output is likely to be rather weak in the final quarter of the year, according to the December report on the economic situation. Contact-intensive services would be curbed by new restrictions to combat the pandemic. At the same time, the industry is suffering from bottlenecks in intermediate goods.
The export-oriented machine-builders are also feeling the effects of this. According to the industry association VDMA, production will grow more slowly this year than initially assumed. An increase of around 7 percent to around 219 billion euros is now expected for 2021 compared to the previous year. “We could have produced more had the various delivery bottlenecks not been so persistent,” explained VDMA President Karl Haeusgen. In September the association had assumed an increase of 10 percent.
A good dose of optimism
Haeusgen was confident for 2022. “We are going into the coming year with a good dose of optimism and are assuming that the pre-Corona level will be reached.” Thanks to the bulging order books, the association expects an increase in production adjusted for price increases (real) of 7 percent instead of the previously expected 5 percent. In 2020, production fell by almost 12 percent.
Raw materials and intermediate products such as semiconductors are currently in short supply. Many industrial companies, including machine builders, are therefore unable to process orders at the usual pace. In mechanical engineering there is a lack of electronic components and metals. An extensive easing of the situation is expected in the second quarter of 2022 at the earliest. For electronic parts, the companies do not expect this before the third quarter. According to Haeusgen, however, the industry has not yet recorded any order cancellations.