CoM | German factory orders last December registered a 3.2% increase over the previous month, when they fell by 4.4%, thus surpassing market consensus expectations and removing fears that the “European locomotive” will enter recession this winter.
According to data released by Germany’s Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), German factory orders experienced a 10.1% decline compared with December 2021, although they were 1.2% above the level recorded in December 2019, before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.
However, excluding large orders, the December figure recorded a decline of 0.6%, implying that the growth recorded at the close of 2022 was mainly due to large orders, which were particularly high in manufacture of electricity distribution and control apparatus, manufacture of engines and turbines except for aircraft engines, vehicles and motorbikes, and manufacture of aircraft and spacecraft and related machinery.
Domestic orders increased by 5.7% in December, while foreign orders rose by 1.2%. In this context, new orders from the euro area increased by 9.8%, while orders from the rest of the world decreased by 3.8%.
While new orders in the capital goods sector remained unchanged, orders for intermediate goods increased by 9.7 per cent. At the same time, new orders in the consumer goods sector decreased by 3.3 per cent.
