According to preliminary data provided by the Federal Statistical Office the number of orders received by German industry fell by 8 percent in September after adjustments for price and season. This development is quite worrying, because in August the number of orders had still increased by 3.5%. One reason for this reduction is demand from abroad which fell sharply by -11.4% whereas domestic demand decreased by -4.3%.
All main industrial sectors were affected by this drop in incoming orders. Most of all the manufacturers of investment goods whose order intake fell by 11.0%. However, this sector had achieved particularly positive figures in August due to several major orders. The order volume received by manufacturers of intermediate inputs fell by 5.4% and that of consumer good producers by 1.5%.
Over the entire third quarter 2008 the order volume received by the German industry fell by 3.9% following reductions of 1.7% and 3.1% in the first and second quarters respectively.
Thus, it must be said that in the German industry the volume of incoming orders has been continuing falling at an increased pace. This development had started in December 2007 and, according to experts from the German ministry for the economy, this does not bode well for the months to come.
A table with detailed figures provided by the German ministry for the economy is available online. 