BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany is guaranteed to slip into recession if Russia’s already strained gas supply is completely cut off, the country’s main industry federation said on Tuesday.
The BDI has revised down its growth forecast for this year to 1.5% against 3.5% forecast before the outbreak of the war in Ukraine. But a complete shutdown of Russian gas supplies would make a recession inevitable, she added.
For its part, the German federal gas market authority, the Bundesnetzagentur, declared that it was not yet necessary to move to the highest stage of the emergency procedures, which would lead to rationing measures affecting the industrial sector in order to ensure continuity of delivery to services of vital interest and to households.
“I am very much in favor of an in-depth study of the most opportune time to go to the highest level of alert,” its director, Klaus Müller, told BR radio.
Germany, which was 55% dependent on Russia for its gas supply before the invasion of Ukraine, has already activated the first alert level of its three-phase plan to deal with the current crisis.
It is nevertheless supposed to rebuild its stocks to reach the objective set by the EU of filling its capacities to 80% by October and 90% by November, objectives determined at European Union level.
(Report Rachel More and Paul Carrel in Berlin, French version Marc Angrand, edited by Kate Entringer)
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