Economic growth: Federal government wants to lower forecast significantly

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The outgoing Minister of Economic Affairs Peter Altmaier: Economic forecast lowered significantly

Photo: ODD ANDERSEN / AFP

The economy is growing less strongly than expected: The German government therefore wants to significantly lower the economic forecast for 2021.

According to information from the German Press Agency, the government expects gross domestic product in Germany to grow by only 2.6 percent for the current year.

In April, the government had expected an increase of 3.5 percent.

In the coming year, however, the reduced growth is to be partially made up: For 2022, the federal government expects growth of 4.1 percent.

She had previously expected growth of 3.6 percent.

The outgoing Federal Economics Minister Peter Altmaier (CDU) will present the federal government's autumn projection tomorrow in Berlin.

The economic institutes had already adjusted their forecast

The lowering of growth expectations for this year does not come as a surprise. Leading economic research institutes only lowered their economic forecast for this year in mid-October. After the corona-related slump in economic output in 2020, the institutes expect growth of 2.4 percent. The ongoing consequences of the pandemic, high energy prices and supply bottlenecks are slowing down the economic upturn in Germany. In the course of 2022, the German economy should return to normal capacity, it said. According to forecasts by the institutes, gross domestic product will rise by 4.8 percent in 2022.

For the year 2023, the federal government then expects growth of 1.6 percent.

For the traffic light coalition, which, according to the plans of the SPD, Greens and FDP, should be in place at the beginning of December, the forecasts could mean increasing tax revenues.

In order to finance the planned investments of billions, they are dependent on additional income from the state.

At the request of the Reuters news agency, the Ministry of Economic Affairs declined to comment and referred to the press conference on Wednesday.

jlk / dpa / Reuters