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Dimly lit pedestrian zone: service providers still the most satisfied
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Oliver Berg / picture alliance / dpa
The mood in micro-enterprises and the self-employed, which was already bad, deteriorated further in August.
The barometer for the business climate fell by 0.7 to a record low of minus 12.8 points, as the Ifo Institute announced on Thursday in its monthly survey.
"Unfortunately, there is little hope of improvement at the moment," said the head of the Ifo surveys, Klaus Wohlrabe, on the development of the indicator, which has been calculated for a year.
»The worry lines among entrepreneurs are deep with a view to the coming months.«
Companies assessed their current situation somewhat less positively than in the previous month.
The service providers are still the most satisfied with their current business.
Although expectations have risen somewhat overall, they remain marked by great pessimism.
The retail trade in particular sees difficult months ahead.
"Even the smallest companies and the self-employed cannot escape the general uncertainty," said Wohlrabe in view of the energy crisis, which is causing high inflation and thus a loss of purchasing power.
The micro-enterprises themselves could do something to ease inflation: They scaled back their price plans for the third month in a row.
However, they remain at a high level, as the Ifo researchers found out.
The mood is currently bad in the entire German economy, as it is suffering not only from high prices but also from a shortage of materials and a weaker global economy.
The Ifo Institute has therefore drastically corrected its economic forecasts for the coming year, which were only three months old.
In terms of gross domestic product, a decline of 0.3 percent is now assumed for 2023 instead of growth of 3.7 percent, because Germans are likely to consume less with falling purchasing power.
"The cuts in gas supplies from Russia in the summer and the resulting drastic price increases are ruining the economic recovery after Corona," said Ifo economic chief Timo Wollmershäuser.
mike/Reuters