German industrial orders fall more than expected in January
FILE PHOTO: A steel worker of ThyssenKrupp stands amid sparks of raw iron coming from a blast furnace at a ThyssenKrupp steel factory in Duisburg, western Germany, November 14, 2022. REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay/File Photo
By Maria Martinez
(Reuters) – German industrial orders fell much more than expected in January due to base effects, the federal statistics office said on Thursday.
Orders fell by 11.3% on the previous month on a seasonally and calendar adjusted basis. A Reuters poll of analysts had pointed to a fall of 6.0%.
The statistics office also revised the figure for December to a 12.0% increase, from a preliminary value of 8.9%.
The sharp decline in January in the month-on-month comparison is due to the high volume of large orders in December 2023, the statistics office said. In January 2024, the large order volume was back at an average level.
Foreign orders fell by 11.4% on the month and domestic orders fell by 11.2%, data from the statistics office showed.
Orders from the euro zone fell by 25.7% on the month, while orders from outside the eurozone rose by 1.6%.
The downturn in Germany’s manufacturing sector deepened in February as output and new orders declined at a faster rate, the HCOB final Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI)showed last week, falling to 42.5 from 45.5 in January.
