Germany’s current account recorded a surplus of €5.9 billion in October 2022, almost half of the previous month’s result.

The year 2020 saw German economic output contract by 5.0%, with the drop in gross domestic product in a year overshadowed by COVID-19 bringing to an end a ten-year run of growth. This compares with a 0.6% rate of expansion in 2019.

At the end of 2021, Germany’s primary outward foreign direct investment (FDI) stocks were up 8% on the year at €1,506 billion. Stocks of FDI in Germany show a different picture. A decline was recorded for the first time in a long period, with stocks down 2% to €852 billion. At €169 billion, German FDI flows abroad proved robust for 2022, despite being down slightly on the exceptionally high level of the previous year. By contrast, FDI flows from abroad to Germany almost halved to €44 billion.

Economic activity in Germany may have more or less stagnated in the first quarter of 2022, the Bundesbank’s economists write in the current issue of the Monthly Report. They expect Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine to have had only a limited impact on Germany’s economy at first. Even so, the repercussions of the war are likely to significantly weaken the recovery, which had actually got off to a strong start. “Disruptions to foreign trade and supply chains, soaring energy prices and heightened uncertainty are weighing on enterprises and households,” the report states.