ZEW index rises surprisingly
“Economic outlook improves significantly”
01/18/2022 11:59 am
Financial experts are much more optimistic than they have been for the next six months. The reason is the assumption that the effects of the pandemic will weaken again in the spring and that the supply chains will also be considerably more robust.
Despite the Omicron wave, stock market professionals are again surprisingly optimistic about the economy in Germany. The barometer for the assessment of the next six months rose unexpectedly in January by 21.8 to 51.7 points, as the Mannheim Center for European Economic Research (ZEW) reported in its monthly survey of 178 analysts and investors. Economists had only expected a small increase to 32.0 points. However, the situation was rated worse than recently and than expected.
“The economic outlook has improved significantly since the beginning of the new year,” commented ZEW President Achim Wambach. Most of the experts surveyed assumed that economic growth would improve in the coming six months. “The phase of economic weakness in the fourth quarter of 2021 should soon be over,” explained Wambach. Because the corona incidences are likely to weaken significantly by early summer. The more positive economic expectations therefore affect a large part of the German economy with the consumer-related and export-oriented sectors.
Chief economist Thomas Gitzel from VP Bank spoke of a clear sign of an upswing and is hoping for an improvement in the spring: “The supply chain difficulties for many products will not be resolved then, but they will at least improve.”
In 2021 as a whole, the German economy grew by 2.7 percent. But between October and December, according to an initial estimate by the Federal Statistical Office, the economy slowed by 0.5 to 1.0 percent compared to the summer quarter. For 2022, most experts expect more growth overall than in the previous year, but the Corona variant Omikron should still be a burden for companies and consumers at the beginning of the year.