In April 2021, Germany’s current account recorded a surplus of €21.3 billion, down €8.7 billion on the previous month’s level. This was driven by the decrease in the goods account surplus and a narrowed surplus on invisible current transactions, comprising primary and secondary income as well as services. 

The Bundesbank has significantly raised its forecast for German economic growth for this year and the next. Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann expects the trajectory of growth to be sustained in equal measure by domestic and foreign demand. However, he sees risks of a setback to economic recovery in the euro area.

Germany’s outward foreign direct investment (FDI) stocks fell by €10 billion to €1,376 billion in 2020. This decline was mainly due to negative exchange rate effects, which led to a lower valuation of the stocks, a Bundesbank press release on these figures explains. The same period saw stocks of FDI in Germany increase by €39 billion to €845 billion.

The German current account recorded a surplus of €18.8 billion in February 2021, up €1.1 billion from the previous month’s level. While the surplus in invisible current transactions, which comprise services as well as primary and secondary income, saw a decline, the surplus in the goods account rose more strongly.

Bundesbank Executive Board member Andreas Dombret is not expecting a financial market crisis following the UK's vote to leave the EU. At an event in Frankfurt am Main, he noted that, even though it was impossible to rule out further movements in prices or shifts of funds from one asset class to another, "a panic reaction to Brexit is rather unlikely at present".