A petrol pump along the A43 motorway near Muenster, Germany. Rising energy prices are a huge burden for the country’s power-hunger manufacturers – Copyright AFP Ina FASSBENDER<\/p>\n
German industrial orders rebounded in February due to strong overseas demand, data showed Wednesday, but officials warned that the Middle East war energy shock would likely derail the positive momentum.<\/p>\n
New orders, a key indicator of future business activity, rose 0.9 percent from a month earlier, according to preliminary figures from statistics agency Destatis, slightly below forecasts.<\/p>\n
It followed a near 11-percent drop in January.<\/p>\n
Despite some volatility, the indicator has generally been trending up since mid-2025 as the government increases public spending in a bid to revive Europe\u2019s struggling biggest economy.<\/p>\n
But the latest figures concern the period immediately before the outbreak of the US-Israeli war against Iran, which has sent oil and gas prices surging, a huge burden for Germany\u2019s power-hungry manufacturers.<\/p>\n
The positive momentum \u201cis likely to be temporarily dampened as a result of the energy price shock associated with the conflict in the Middle East,\u201d the economy ministry said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Overseas demand surged 4.7 percent in February while domestic orders dropped 4.4 percent, according to Destatis.\u00a0<\/p>\n
There was good news for the troubled auto sector, where orders rose 3.8 percent, and there were also strong increases in demand for metal products.<\/p>\n
But there was a near 26-percent month-on-month decline in the category of transport equipment that includes military vehicles, aircraft, ships and trains.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hopes for a recovery in Germany this year following several bleak years have been dampened due to the energy shock unleashed by the war.<\/p>\n
Last week, leading economic institutes more than halved their growth forecast for this year, and now are predicting expansion of just 0.6 percent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A petrol pump along the A43 motorway near Muenster, Germany. Rising energy prices are a huge burden for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2993,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[95,5,3193,616],"class_list":{"0":"post-2992","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-economy","9":"tag-germany","10":"tag-indicator","11":"tag-industry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2992"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2992\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}