German industrial output falls further than forecast in September

German industrial production fell more than expected in September, data showed on Tuesday, as a recent slump in incoming orders took its toll on production.

Production fell in September by 1.4 per cent compared with the previous month, the federal statistics office said.

Analysts polled by Reuters had predicted a 0.1 per cent decline.

In a less volatile quarter-on-quarter comparison, production in the third quarter of 2023 was 2.1 per cent lower than in the second quarter, the statistics office said.

After a revision of the provisional results, production decreased by 0.1 per cent in August compared with July, less than the 0.2 per cent of the provisional figure.

There are few figures that summarise the state of the German economy as well as industrial production, Thomas Gitzel, chief economist at VP Bank, said.

“The industry-heavy German economy is dependent on production in order to achieve reasonable economic growth rates,” he said, noting that industrial production this year has been weak.

Another disappointing data release in industrial production not only suggests that third-quarter GDP growth could be revised downwards, but also that the country is likely to end the year in a technical recession, said Carsten Brzeski, global head of macro at ING.

“Even though there isn’t any hard data for the fourth quarter yet, recent developments have clearly increased the risk that the German economy will end the year in recession,” Brzeski said.