Germany’s economy is believed to have contracted by around 0.25 per cent in the fourth quarter of last year, the government’s statistics office said on Wednesday. The Wall Street Journal reported that the contraction partially offset full-year growth, highlighting that even the euro zone’s largest economy wasn’t immune to waning global demand and the burden of the currency’s area’s persistent debt crisis. Overall, GDP grew 3.0 per cent in 2011, below the previous year’s growth rate of 3.7 per cent — the fastest since reunification, according to Reuters. Germany’s export-driven economy had recovered quickly from the financial crisis, but began to feel the pinch late last year as the debt crisis spread from Greece to its key trading partners in the euro zone. Reuters says that Germany earns 28 per cent of its GDP by exporting goods to EU countries and Switzerland, but only 2.5 per cent in exports to China, Berenberg Bank pointed out.

This entry was posted by Izabella Kaminska on Wednesday, January 11th, 2012 at 10:19 and is featured in The Closer (11 Jan 2012), The Lunch Wrap (11 Jan 2012) . Tagged with eurozone, gdp, germany. Edit this entry.