By Miranda Murray<\/p>\n
BERLIN, April 21 (Reuters) – German investor morale has sunk to its lowest level in more than three years in April as businesses \u200cstart to feel the economic consequences of the Iran war far beyond \u200cprice increases, the ZEW economic research institute said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The institute’s morale index fell to minus 17.2 \u200bpoints in April, significantly below the minus 5.0 points expected by analysts polled by Reuters and well down from last month’s minus 0.5 points.<\/p>\n
It was the lowest reading since December 2022 at minus 23.3.<\/p>\n
“Businesses are concerned about long-term shortages of energy supply, and \u200cthis discourages investment and weakens \u2060the effect of government stimuli,” said ZEW president Achim Wambach.<\/p>\n
SEVERE OIL CRISIS REMAINS THE NIGHTMARE SCENARIO<\/p>\n
The spike in oil and gas \u2060prices following the start of joint U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran on February 28 has added to the struggles of Europe’s largest economy as it tries to regain momentum in the \u200blong \u200bwake of the COVID pandemic.<\/p>\n
Fears of a prolonged \u200benergy shortage caused by the \u200cblockade on the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil is usually shipped, helped lead to the surprisingly sheer drop in the ZEW indicator, said VP Bank economist Thomas Gitzel.<\/p>\n
Prospects in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries, as well as steel and metal producers, have deteriorated particularly strongly in April, according to ZEW.<\/p>\n
“A \u200csevere oil crisis remains the nightmare scenario, despite \u200ball hopes for a resolution to the conflict,” \u200bsaid Hauck Aufhaeuser Lampe Privatbank economist \u200bAlexander Krueger.<\/p>\n
“Either way, economic growth this year will fall short \u200cof the expectations held at the end \u200bof 2025.”<\/p>\n
The German government \u200bis set to halve its 2026 economic growth forecast to 0.5% and raise its inflation projections when it unveils new forecasts on Wednesday, a source \u200btold Reuters last week.<\/p>\n
The \u200cindicator monitoring current conditions also fell more than expected, to minus 73.7 \u200bpoints. Analysts expected a reading of minus 70.0 points.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Miranda Murray, \u200bediting by Linda Pasquini and Hugh Lawson)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Miranda Murray BERLIN, April 21 (Reuters) – German investor morale has sunk to its lowest level in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6307,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[6300,464,5,253,6301],"class_list":{"0":"post-6306","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-economic-consequences","9":"tag-german-government","10":"tag-germany","11":"tag-iran","12":"tag-zew"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6306","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=6306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6306\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}