RECESSION OF THE CENTURY

German economy fell a record 10.1% in the second quarter: 'It's a recession of the century' AUTHOR: Hina , Novac.hr POSTED: 07/30/2020. at 12:12 German Chancellor Angela Merkel talks with an employee as she visits VW's car factory in Zwickau, eastern Germany, on November 4, 2019 on the occasion of the start of production of the new Volkswagen electric car, the ID.3 model. (Photo by RONNY HARTMANN / AFP)RONNY HARTMANN / AFP Angela Merkel The German economy fell by a record 10.1 percent in the second quarter from the previous quarter, amid a pandemic that hit household consumption, corporate investment and exports hard, preliminary data from Germany's statistical office Destatis showed on Thursday. Related news The German central bank expects the biggest drop in real GDP since 1970 The strongest European economy is planning record indebtedness "This is the strongest quarterly decline since 1970, when GDP calculations for Germany began," Destatis said in a statement. "It's official now. It's the recession of the century," said DekaBank economist Andreas Scheuerle. “What has so far been impossible to achieve with a sharp drop in stock prices or shocks in the oil markets, has been accomplished by a tiny 160-nanometer creature called the corona,” he said. Compared to the second quarter of 2019, Europe’s largest economy fell 11.7 percent, according to seasonally adjusted data from the German statistical office. Analysts in the Reuters poll expected a drop of nine percent quarterly and 11.3 percent year-on-year, according to seasonally adjusted data. The German economy already fell 2.2 percent in the first quarter from the previous quarter. In mid-March, the government introduced a series of restrictive measures to curb the spread of the new coronavirus infection. These measures included restrictions on public life, border closures and forced production outages, resulting in almost catastrophic consequences for many key industries in Germany in the months that followed, recalls the German news agency Dpa. Exports and imports of goods and services, as well as household consumption and investment in equipment, fell sharply in the second quarter due to the pandemic, but government spending rose, according to Reuters