Deutsche Bank har lavet en omfattende analyse af Tyskland som industrination, og stiller indirekte spørgsmålet, om Tyskland har toppet som industrination. Selv før coronakrisen var der en afmatning, og selv om produktionen måske stiger mere end 10 pct. næste år, så vil industriproduktionen ikke være på 2018-niveauet. Der er især nedgang i bilproduktionens andel af økonomien. Der er en risiko for, at Tyskland bliver mindre attraktiv som industrination.
Uddrag fra Deutsche Bank:
German industry
Due to the coronavirus, production in the manufacturing sector in Germany is
expected to fall by roughly 10% to 15% in real terms in 2020 (-15% qoq in Q2
alone, followed by recovery). However, it does not take much imagination to
picture plausible scenarios in which manufacturing could see an even sharper
decline. By way of comparison, industrial production shrank by 17.3% in
Germany in 2009. We expect producers of capital goods to be affected more
strongly than the food, chemical or pharmaceuticals industries.
In 2021, industrial production could rise by more than 10% in real terms on
average over the course of the year. However, even with a rise this sharp,
production would still fall short of the levels seen in 2018.
Society and business will learn to live with the coronavirus and weigh up health,
social and economic risks in the process. Once the COVID-19 crisis is no longer
the dominant factor that overshadows everything else, (other) structural aspects
will once again come back to the fore.
Overall, we see a risk that Germany may become less attractive as an industrial
location over the coming years. For example, costs have risen recently. Wage
costs and effective average corporate tax rates are among the highest in an
international comparison, and electricity prices for many industrial companies
are high compared to those in other countries. Energy-intensive companies are
finding it difficult to deal with the uncertainty about long-term climate and energy
policies. Capital stock in these sectors has been shrinking for years in Germany.
Policymakers and industrial companies are likely to view the crisis surrounding
the coronavirus as an opportunity to make important political decisions and get
structural reforms off the ground, as they should. For companies, this means
things like taking a closer look at international value chains. For the state, there
is a need for action with regard to taxes (e.g. expanding the taxation-based
promotion and funding of research) and the labour market (enabling flexibility
instruments rather than hindering them). This holds also for climate and energy
policy (e.g. greater focus on efficiency and performance, or financing subsidies
for climate protection through general taxation rather than the electricity price).
Production activity in the manufacturing sector hit a record high in Germany in
2018. The ability of the industrial sector to once again match or exceed this
production volume, and the speed at which it is able to do so, depends on
structural location factors that are influenced by policy decisions. Without
concerted efforts to tackle the location-specific structural problems,
manufacturing could see a sustained period of weakness in Germany.
