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Containers in the port of Hamburg
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Fabian Bimmer / REUTERS
The mood in the German economy has deteriorated further with the continued shortage of important raw materials and goods.
The ifo business climate index fell to 97.7 points in October, after 98.9 points in September.
This is the fourth time in a row that the economic research institute has found a decline in its monthly survey of 9,000 executives.
Experts had expected a slightly smaller decrease to 97.9 points.
"Delivery problems make the companies to create," said Ifo President Clemens Fuest.
Capacity utilization in industry is falling.
"Sand in the gears of the German economy is holding back the recovery." The managers assessed their situation, but especially the business outlook for the next six months, more skeptical than before.
The German economy had shrunk by two percent at the beginning of the year due to the corona crisis, but then grew by 1.6 percent in the course of the lockdown easing in the spring.
Despite delivery bottlenecks for important preliminary products, many economists assume that growth is likely to have accelerated in the past summer quarter.
The Kiel IfW Institute expects the gross domestic product (GDP) to increase by 2.2 percent compared to the previous quarter.
However, due to the global scarcity of materials and increasing corona infections, the economy is likely to lose momentum again in the current final quarter.
This was also recently signaled by the surveys of industry and service providers on the purchasing manager index.
More soon on SPIEGEL.de
apr / Reuters
