But the federal government has to solve problems
Bank boss does not paint the German economy black
08/12/2023 1:33 p.m
There has been a lot of complaints about the German economy in recent weeks. The German bank boss Herkenhoff does not agree with the canon. However, he also sees challenges for politics. There is a lot of bureaucracy and energy prices are too high. And then there is a perennial problem.
The Association of German Banks (BdB) does not see any fundamental dangers for Germany as a business location, but considers additional measures to strengthen it to be urgently required. He does not believe that “Germany is failing as a location or that we are the sick man in Europe,” said BdB general manager Heiner Herkenhoff of the “Welt am Sonntag”. The federal government must urgently address the existing problems so that companies invest again.
The situation is not as bad as many claim, Herkenhoff continues. But there are fundamental problems. Specifically, he named “the excessive bureaucracy, the high energy costs” and “the blatant lack of workers”. The latter applies not only to skilled workers, but also to workers in general.
The head of the Federal Network Agency, Klaus Müller, countered fears of imminent de-industrialization due to high energy prices. He is “confident that in a few years it will be possible to supply our industry with enough climate-neutral energy at competitive prices and to prevent deindustrialization,” Müller told the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung.
Many companies also said: “We can do it,” emphasized Müller. To bridge the gap, however, the head of the network agency, like Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck, pushed for an industrial electricity price in order to relieve particularly affected companies. Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Federal Minister of Finance Christian Lindner have so far resisted this.