Enlarge image
Assembly of vans at VW: the industry lacks primary products
Photo: Julian Stratenschulte / dpa
After three increases in a row, German companies experienced a significant setback in the number of new orders in February.
Compared to January, orders fell by 2.2 percent, as reported by the Federal Statistical Office.
Experts had only expected a minus of 0.2 percent.
"The decline in incoming orders in February is primarily to be seen against the background of the significant increases in the previous months," wrote the Federal Ministry of Economics.
»An effect of the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine is hardly contained in the data.«
However, the war led to a high degree of uncertainty regarding the further development of demand.
The outlook for the coming months is therefore muted.
"The decline is particularly due to foreign orders," the statisticians explained the development in February.
Their volume was 3.3 percent lower than in January.
New business outside the euro zone fell by 3.4 percent, and that from the monetary union fell by 3.3 percent.
Domestic orders, on the other hand, fell only slightly by 0.2 percent.
According to Commerzbank chief economist Jörg Krämer, industrial production will depend less on demand than on the availability of preliminary products in the coming months.
"And it has worsened again because of the Ukraine war and the rigid lockdown policy in China." As a result, many companies have problems processing the incoming orders at all.
Raw materials and preliminary products are missing
Many industrial companies are currently reporting increasing bottlenecks, some of which got worse after the Russian invasion of Ukraine: In March, 80.2 percent complained about bottlenecks and problems with the procurement of preliminary products and raw materials, as the Ifo Institute found out in its company survey .
For example, the car manufacturers are missing the cable harnesses previously manufactured in Ukraine.
According to the Ifo, 17 percent of industrial companies import from Russia, which has been subjected to severe sanctions by western countries because of the war.
Thomas Gitzel, chief economist at VP Bank, wrote that German industry could get over the drop in orders in February.
In any case, well-filled order books are no guarantee for a good economy.
»As long as there are no raw materials and preliminary products, incoming orders will increasingly become of no practical relevance.«
mmq/Reuters/dpa
