BERLIN (Reuters) -Germany’s services sector began the second half of the year with renewed growth in business activity and an increase in demand, a survey showed on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The HCOB final services Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) rose to 50.6 in July from 49.7 in June, slightly above a preliminary reading of 50.1.<\/p>\n
July marked the first time in four months that the reading was above the 50 mark indicating expansion, although the growth rate was marginal and slower than the long-run series average.<\/p>\n
A reading below 50 signals contraction.<\/p>\n
The survey highlighted a boost in activity driven by expanded workforces, new service offerings and a rise in new business, with inflows of new work increasing for the first time in almost a year – albeit only marginally.<\/p>\n
Despite the positive growth, the sector faced challenges with a decrease in backlogs of work, marking a 15-month sequence of decline. Staffing capacity increased but employment growth was at its weakest since the start of the year.<\/p>\n
The HCOB final composite PMI, which tracks the services and manufacturing sectors that together account for more than two-thirds of the euro zone’s largest economy, also rose, climbing to 50.6 from 50.4 the month before, above an initial reading of 50.3.<\/p>\n
“Slightly rising order intakes and moderately improved export business across manufacturing and services combined paint the picture of an economy that is slowly but visibly emerging from a prolonged period of weakness,” said Hamburg Commercial Bank chief economist Cyrus de la Rubia.<\/p>\n
The German economy is thus expected to return to modest growth in the third quarter after contracting in the second quarter, said de la Rubia.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Miranda Murray; Editing by Hugh Lawson)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BERLIN (Reuters) -Germany’s services sector began the second half of the year with renewed growth in business activity…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":319328,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[2000,299,1824,115925,1199],"class_list":{"0":"post-319327","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-germany","11":"tag-hcob","12":"tag-services"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114975171108667031","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319327"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319327\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/319328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}