German business sentiment rose unexpectedly for the sixth month in a row in April in a sign that Europes largest economy continues to outpace peers and shrug off worries about the euro zone debt crisis.
The Munich-based Ifo think tank said yesterday its business climate index, based on a monthly survey of some 7,000 companies, inched up to 109.9 in April from 109.8 in March, taking it to its highest level since July 2011.
“The German economy is proving resilient,” Ifo president Hans-Werner Sinn said.
The euro pushed up to a session high against the dollar and German bond futures erased gains on the numbers, which came days after another closely watched German sentiment gauge from the Mannheim-based ZEW institute pushed to its highest level in nearly two years.
The German economy has rebounded strongly from the global financial crisis in 2008-09, interrupted only by a 0.2 per cent contraction in the last quarter of 2011 when worries over the euro crisis weighed on exports and private consumption.
Many economists now believe this was a blip, and that Germany’s economy will avoid a recession, generally defined as two consecutive quarters of contraction. Germany’s leading economic institutes, whose forecasts form the basis for official government projections, revised up their forecast for 2012 growth on Thursday, projecting an expansion of 0.9 per cent. For next year, they expect growth of 2 per cent. – (Bloomberg)
