Industrial production in Germany dropped 9.2% in March compared with the previous month, because of the coronavirus measures, the economy ministry said Thursday.
The first quarter had a 1.2% decline in production compared with last year’s fourth quarter, but the ministry cautioned that “a significantly stronger slump in production” can be expected for April.
In March, factory orders plunged 15.6%. Germany started shutting down in mid-March. Authorities never closed factories, but companies did stop production in some areas, such as the automaking sector. The German automaker BMW said it expected earnings to deteriorate during the first half of this year due to the coronavirus lockdowns, and predicted the entire auto industry would be held back by the outbreak “for quite some time to come”.
On Thursday, the Bank of England said that, as a result to the pandemic, the British economy could suffer its deepest annual contraction since the Spanish War of Succession in 1706, when the economy contracted by 15%. The bank forecast the British economy will be 30% smaller at the end of the first half of the year than at the start, with the second quarter seeing a 25% slump alone following a 3% decline in the first.
