BERLIN (Reuters) – Recession in Germany is expected to end in the spring quarter, the Bundesbank said in its monthly report on Monday, adding that gross domestic product would “rise slightly” in the April to June period.
“Private consumption should bottom out,” experts from the German central bank wrote in the report. “Thanks to strongly rising wages, the real disposable incomes of private households are stabilising despite inflation remaining very high.”
At the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023, Europe’s largest economy contracted for two quarters in a row, defined by economists as a “technical recession”.
The Bundesbank said the spring quarter uptick would be supported by German industry’s ability to weather a continued decline in demand thanks to lower energy prices, easing of supply bottlenecks and full order books.
For 2023 as a whole, the Bundesbank expects GDP to decline by a calendar-adjusted 0.3%, followed by growth of 1.2% in 2024 and 1.3% in 2025.
“The German economy is thus recovering only laboriously from the crises of the last three years,” it said.
(Reporting by Rene Wagner, Writing by Friederike Heine, Editing by xx)
