Munich, June 16, (dpa/GNA) – Global supply bottlenecks will slow down the economic recovery in Germany even after the coronavirus pandemic, according to the latest economic forecast.
The economists at the Munich-based Ifo Institute still expect growth of 3.3 per cent this year, the institute said on Wednesday. That would be 0.4 percentage points less than expected in March.
According to economic researcher Timo Wollmershaeuser, the bottlenecks in the supply of primary products – including the shortage of chips in the car industry – will have a dampening effect in the short term.
On the other hand, the upswing in the coming year could be much stronger than originally expected: For 2022, the Ifo Institute raised its growth forecast by 1.1 points to 4.3 per cent.
Notwithstanding this, the scientists assume that the coronavirus crisis will cause losses of 382 billion euros (463 billion dollars) to the German economy from 2020 to 2022.
This is based on the assumption that the economy could have grown by an annual average of 1.2 per cent without the crisis.
In 2020, the price-adjusted gross domestic product shrank by just under 5 per cent.
Wollmershaeuser and his colleagues assume that the situation on the labour market is also increasingly easing.
At the end of May, an estimated 2.3 million people were still on short-time work as part of a government-backed furlough scheme.
For the coming year, the economists expect only 100,000 short-time workers, just as few as before the crisis began. Unemployment could therefore fall from 2.7 million at the end of 2020 to 2.4 million next year.
GNA