The Ifo Business Climate for industry and trade in Germany clouded over somewhat in February. For the first time in ten months, the business climate index has not risen. Responsible for this decline is especially the situation in retailing, which experienced a setback in February. On the whole, the firms have assessed their current business situation somewhat more unfavourably than in the previous month. They regard their business outlook for the coming half year slightly more favourably than in January. The economic recovery is expected to continue when winter is over.
In manufacturing the business climate index remains largely unchanged. The survey participants are marginally more dissatisfied with their current business situation than in January. However, with regard to business developments in the coming six months they are again more confident. They expect clear stimulus from export business. The industrial firms intend a clear slowdown in the pace of staff reductions.
In the two distribution sectors, wholesaling and retailing, the business climate has cooled noticeably. The retailers report a considerably worse business situation than in January. Also their business outlook for the near future is considerably more pessimistic than previously. In wholesaling the business climate index has not fallen as strongly as in retailing. The surveyed wholesalers are also clearly more dissatisfied with their current business situation, but they are less sceptical regarding the six-month business outlook than in January.
In construction the business climate index has risen once again. The surveyed contractors have assessed their current business situation somewhat more favourably than in January. However, current construction activity is strongly constrained by weather conditions. Contractors’ business expectations are again more optimistic, their scepticism here having already clearly weakened in the past month.
Hans-Werner Sinn President of the Ifo Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich
Ifo Business Climate Index Falls Slightly Ifo Business Climate Germany - Results of the February 2010 Ifo Business Survey (23 Feb 2010) Document Size: ca. 100 kb
The Ifo Business Climate for Germany (from January 1991) The table is in Excel-format for facilitating further processing by the user. Long time-series of the Business Climate for German trade and industry and its two components, the business situation and the expectations Document Size: ca. 40 kb
The Ifo Business Climate Index is based on ca. 7,000 monthly survey responses of firms in manufacturing, construction, wholesaling and retailing. The firms are asked to give their assessments of the current business situation and their expectations for the next six months. They can characterise their situation as “good”, “satisfactorily” or “poor” and their business expectations for the next six months as “more favourable”, “unchanged” or “more unfavourable”. The balance value of the current business situation is the difference of the percentages of the responses “good” and “poor”, the balance value of the expectations is the difference of the percentages of the responses “more favourable” and “more unfavourable”. The business climate is a transformed mean of the balances of the business situation and the expectations. For calculating the index values the transformed balances are all normalized to the average of the year 2000.
To find out how the Ifo Business Climate Index is calculated and its forecasting quality please click here.
One week after the Ifo Business Climate Index is released, the Ifo Institute publishes, in the periodical "ifo Konjunkturperspektiven", the results of the most recent Ifo Business Survey in east and west Germany in all details with texts and graphics as well as the business situation for the EU as a whole and for Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and Italy in figures. To inform non-German speakers of the survey results of the Ifo Institute, we present a short overview of the contents of each issue in English.
Consult the ifo Konjunkturperspektiven overview page for the current issue.
are published in ifo Konjunkturperspektiven. A summary is published in ifo Schnelldienst.
24 Mar 2010 10:30 AM CET 23 Apr 2010 10:30 AM CEST 21 May 2010 10:30 AM CEST
Phone: +49(0)89/9224-1308 Fax: +49(0)89/985369 E-Mail: 101-100-46-111-102-105-64-114-101-103-114-101-98-98-97
