KfW Business Cycle Compass February 2019
German economy takes a breather in 2019; growth should pick up again in 2020
Cyclical weakness continues; economic output will rise slightly at best in the first quarter. The year started with no momentum and the outlook for the global economy is less favourable, so KfW Research has significantly downgraded its economic forecast for the year 2019 to 0.8% (previous forecast: 1.6%). Real growth should pick up again to 1.8% in 2020 (initial forecast). But almost 0.4 percentage points of this is due to the changed position of public holidays in the calendar. Next year employees will work almost four days more than in 2019, providing an additional boost to economic output. The underlying cyclical momentum, however, will recover only slightly.
KfW Business Cycle Compass Germany February 2019 (PDF, 186 KB, non-accessible)
