BERLIN (MNI) – German GDP growth might exceed 3% this year,
Chancellor Angela Merkel said Wednesday in a speech at an export
industry conference here.
“The economic situation is better than we had expected,” Merkel
told the audience. Economic growth in 2010 “will be 3% or maybe even
somewhat more” and unemployment could fall below three million already
this autumn, she said.
As the biggest risk to a sustained recovery of the global economy,
Merkel cited non-tariff protectionist measures, highlighting especially
“the manipulation of foreign exchange rates.”
Economics Minister Rainer Bruederle said on Monday that the
government will raise its GDP growth forecast for this year to at least
3% from the +1.4% projected in April.
“There will be a 3 before the digit,” Bruederle told German ZDF
television. The minister is scheduled to present the government’s new
growth forecasts on Thursday.
Due to the good economic development, federal net new borrowing
this year will likely amount to only “somewhat more than E50 billion,”
Merkel said.
Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble last month predicted federal
net new borrowing of “somewhere between below E60 billion and E50
billion” this year. Previously, the government had assumed a borrowing
need of E65.2 billion.
–Berlin bureau: +49-30-22 62 05 80; email: twidder@marketnews.com
[TOPICS: MT$$$$,M$G$$$,M$X$$$,MGX$$$,MFX$$$,MFGBU$,M$$FX$]
