Higher energy prices in Germany impact competitiveness of manufacturers, economist says
oh I mean what we have seen in the last
couple of months is that energy costs
were going down especially the prices
for electricity and for gas uh not only
for consumers but also for the industry
um and this is something as far as we
can see that at the moment uh that is
going uh to to continue in the next
couple of months but this is clear I
mean if we compare Energy prices in
Germany uh to Energy prices in other
regions in the world uh uh they are much
higher uh than elsewhere and this is of
course something which is um um well
which is uh um putting a track on uh
competitiveness on on on on German
manufacturing fir
firms uh so you’re mentioning German
manufacturing I want to ask you um is
the German Chancellor’s visit to China
and some of his very tough talk about
Fair competition is that factored into
this report do you expect it to show up
on the next one and some of that
competition from China uh accusations of
dumping how does that factor into the
numbers that we’re seeing
uh there are a lot of structural changes
going on at the moment um for the German
um manufacturing industry on the one
hand this is China of course uh which is
uh not only uh let’s say um a country
that is producing intermediate Goods uh
over the last couple of years we have
seen that uh Chinese firms are also
producing Goods where they are competing
with German firms so this is new um
structural change changes also going on
in terms of digitization
robotization um Electrical uh electric
vehicles uh all these things are
dramatically changing the the landscape
of the German industry and uh and it’s
not clear at the moment if if German um
industry is really managing this this
structural change if they are uh
deciding to stay in Germany to to
produce uh here or if they’re looking
for uh locations elsewhere something
that we’ve seen for example in the
chemical industry which uh is of course
uh one of the consequences of the high
energy costs in in Germany so for
chemical industry for example we see
that they have been relocating their
business elsewhere um uh employment has
gone down in the chemical industry is
the only industry at the moment where we
see actually that employment has gone
down and this is one of the one of the
signs at least uh uh of of of of a
relocation of of firms so
Timo Wollmershäuser, head of economic forecasts at IFO, discusses the German economy and the competitiveness of companies.