By Maria Martinez<\/p>\n
BERLIN, April 9 (Reuters) – German industrial production fell unexpectedly in February, with economists saying the weakness pointed to disappointing first quarter for Europe’s biggest economy, despite exports \u200crising by more than expected on stronger European demand.<\/p>\n
Industrial production decreased by 0.3% compared with \u200cthe previous month, Germany’s federal statistics office said on Thursday. Analysts polled by Reuters had predicted a 0.7% rise.<\/p>\n
“Data released today \u200bunderline that Germany’s manufacturing sector was subdued even before the Iran conflict,” said Andrew Kennigham, chief Europe economist at Capital Economics.<\/p>\n
Kennigham expects the sector to remain weak this year, although it is not likely to suffer anything like the big declines seen during the last energy crisis that began in 2022.<\/p>\n
The less volatile three-month \u200con three-month comparison showed that production \u2060was 0.4% lower in the period from December to February than in the previous three months.<\/p>\n
ON TRACK FOR CONTRACTION EVEN WITHOUT WAR<\/p>\n
February’s data shows that even without \u2060the Ian war, the German economy was on track for yet another quarter of contraction, said Carsten Brzeski, global head of macro at ING.<\/p>\n
“As much as we were hoping to finally comment on some good economic news \u200bfrom \u200bGermany, it is a bit like waiting for a \u200bGerman train these days: definitely delayed and \u200cuncertain whether it will ever arrive,” Brzeski said.<\/p>\n
Orders rose 0.9% on a seasonally and calendar-adjusted basis, official data showed on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Recent trends in new factory orders offer little hope that the economy will soon receive significant additional momentum from the industrial sector, said Ralph Solveen, senior economist at Commerzbank, forecasting the overall economy is likely to have grown only marginally in the first quarter.<\/p>\n
EXPORTS ON THE RISE<\/p>\n
German exports rose by 3.6% \u200ccompared with the previous month, data from the federal statistics \u200boffice showed, posting the biggest increase since May 2022. This \u200bcompared with a forecast for a 1% increase in \u200ba Reuters poll.<\/p>\n
Imports rose by 4.7% on the month on a calendar and \u200cseasonally adjusted basis.<\/p>\n
As a result, Germany’s foreign trade \u200bbalance narrowed to a \u200bsurplus of 19.8 billion euros ($23.09 billion) in February, from a surplus of 20.3 billion euros in January.<\/p>\n
Exports to European Union countries rose by 5.8% on the month and exports to countries \u200boutside the EU increased by 0.8%.<\/p>\n
With \u200cthe tariffs imposed by the U.S., exports to Germany’s main export destination fell by 7.5% \u200bon the month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Maria Martinez BERLIN, April 9 (Reuters) – German industrial production fell unexpectedly in February, with economists saying…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3192,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3344,3341,3342,5,3340,3343,3345,3346],"class_list":{"0":"post-3191","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-andrew-kennigham","9":"tag-federal-statistics-office","10":"tag-german-exports","11":"tag-germany","12":"tag-industrial-production","13":"tag-industrial-sector","14":"tag-previous-month","15":"tag-the-german-economy"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3191","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=3191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3191\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}