The German current account recorded a surplus of €18.8 billion in March 2022, down €2.3 billion on the previous month’s level.

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.

Households’ financial assets grew by €161 billion to €7,618 billion in the fourth quarter of 2021. Taking all transactions and valuation effects into account, growth was thus significantly higher than in the (weak) third quarter.

The German current account recorded a surplus of €20.8 billion in February 2022, up €8.4 billion on the previous month’s level. This was mainly attributable to an increase in the goods account surplus. Conversely, the surplus in invisible current transactions, which comprise services as well as primary and secondary income, contracted slightly. 

German banks tightened their credit standards for loans to enterprises marginally in the first quarter 2022. The banks also applied stricter standards for loans to households for house purchase. Meanwhile, credit standards for consumer credit and other lending remained unchanged.

Ingrid Herden, who will be joining the Bundesbank in June, will be taking over as Director General Communications and the President’s spokesperson on 1 October 2022 from Michael Best, who is leaving the Bundesbank at the end of September after 11 years of service.
 

The Bundesbank’s landscape architecture competition for the new campus at its Central Office in Frankfurt am Main has come to a close. An expert jury selected four prize winners and awarded one honourable mention out of a total of 16 submitted designs.

In the second year of the coronavirus pandemic, general government debt in Germany as defined in the Maastricht Treaty increased by €162 billion to €2.476 trillion. Growth was therefore weaker than in the first year of the coronavirus pandemic.

Germany’s current account recorded a surplus of €11.0 billion in January 2022, down €13.6 billion on the previous month’s level. The surplus in the goods account declined considerably, with the surplus in invisible current transactions, which comprise services as well as primary and secondary income, contracting even more strongly.