Germany’s statistics office said on Monday that the country’s industrial production fell 3.4% last March, compared with growth it had recorded the previous month at 2.1%.
In a Reuters poll, analysts expected a decline of 1.3%.
The auto industry was a major contributor to the March decline, with manufacturing of autos and parts falling 6.5% from a 6.9% increase in February.
Germany is home to car manufacturers such as Volkswagen, BMW and Mercedes-Benz, and the automotive sector is one of the most important pillars of industry in the country.
In the latest indication that Europe’s biggest economy is facing the possibility of a contraction, official data showed last week that orders at German factories suffered the biggest drop in March since the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. corona epidemic in 2020.
New orders, which provide an indicator of factory output, surprisingly fell 10.7% from the previous month.
Elmar Volker, an analyst at LBBW Bank, said the latest data on industrial production in Germany “confirms that the risks of recession have by no means been averted”.
But the Economy Ministry insisted that the business climate has recently improved, which “indicates an economic recovery over the year”.
Avoid stagnation
Meanwhile, data from the Statistics Office showed gross domestic product in Europe’s biggest economy was unchanged on a quarterly basis, remaining at 0.2%, in line with Reuters expectations.
The German economy contracted at an adjusted rate of 0.5% in the last quarter of 2022 compared to the third quarter, which raised fears again of a technical recession, which is a recession that occurs when two consecutive quarters of contraction are recorded.
The German government expects growth of 0.4% for the whole of 2023.
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