Germany’s economy shrank by 3.8 percent in the first quarter, the sharpest decline since record-keeping began in 1970, as demand for the country’s exports dried up amid the global economic crisis, government data showed yesterday.
The steep drop in January-March over the previous three months was the fourth consecutive quarterly contraction to GDP.
Europe’s biggest economy shrank 0.5 percent in the second and third quarters of last year, putting it into a technical recession, and a revised rate of 2.2 percent in the fourth.
The Federal Statistical Office in Wiesbaden said in a statement that falling exports — the engine of the German economy — helped accelerate the contraction.
“The decrease of price-adjusted exports was markedly larger than that of imports,” the statement said. Lower capital investment, the office said, exacerbated the decline.
The government has forecast that Germany’s economy will shrink 6 percent this year, followed by a feeble 0.5 percent return to growth next year.
Germany’s economy grew 1.3 percent last year, about half as much as the previous year.
Meanwhile, the French economy entered recession in the first quarter as manufacturing and exports continued to suffer the impact of the global economic slowdown, the national statistics agency said yesterday.
The eurozone’s second-largest economy contracted by 1.2 percent in the first three months of the year compared to the previous quarter and by 1.5 percent in the fourth quarter of last year, the INSEE statistics agency said.
French manufacturing continued its sharp slowdown in the first quarter, with automobile production down 12.8 percent on the quarter, the INSEE said. Exports shrank 7.2 percent, while consumer spending growth was stable at 0.2 percent.
The French economy is now on track to contract by 3 percent this year, French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde said.
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