Germany’s Federal Statistics Office said that the country’s exports increased higher than predicted in September and Europe's largest economy has been boosted by foreign trade into the fourth quarter while still managing to avoid a deeper contraction. Last month’s seasonally adjusted exports hiked 2.3% after a 2.9% upwardly revised rise in August. At the same time, after rising 5.8% in August, September’s imports fell by 0.1%, expanding the trade surplus by over 17.8 billion euros.
Economists in media polls had predicted the exports to increase by 2.0% while imports expanded 2.1%, combined into a forecasted trade surplus of around 15.8 billion euros. Carsten Brzeski, an ING economist, said that the outlook for exports and industrial production might possibly still be able to prevent Germany's economy from plunging into a second lockdown depression in the Q4 2020. With Biden as the U.S President-elect, the signalled U.S tariff on European automotive should cease, he said.
In the third quarter of 2020, Germany's economy grew at a record rate by 8.2% due to exports and higher consumer spending, but a wave of second infection clusters of Coronavirus evoked new partial lockdown, dimming the country’s economic outlook for the last quarter of this year and beyond.
Annual export figures showed exports to the U.S fell 5.8% in a year-on-year comparison, particularly affected by the raging pandemic in the destination country, and to the UK fell by 12.4%. At the same time, September’s exports to China increased by 10.6% in a year-on-year comparison.
The Federal Statistics Office figures show German industry manages the growth despite the global pandemic, as the industrial output increased in September. Data also showed service sectors in October suffer as the service activities shrank for the first time in four months, and predicted to be sink even lower from the closing of restaurants, bars, cinemas, gyms, theatres and domestic tourism started last week for a month to curb the new infection cases of coronavirus.
