German industrial output falls record 17.9% in April
German industrial output falls record 17.9% in April
BERLIN (AFP) - German industrial output plunged a record 17.9 percent in April compared with March as the coronavirus pandemic shut down Europe’s biggest economy, official data showed Monday.
After a fall of 8.9 percent in March, industrial output experienced "its biggest drop since this data was first recorded in January 1991," the Destatis official statistics agency said.
Compared with April 2019, industrial output was down 25.3 percent.
The April outcome was worse than the average 16 percent fall expected by analysts.
By category, April machine tools were down 35.3 percent on the month, intermediate goods fell 13.8 percent and consumer goods were off 8.7 percent.
The key auto industry saw output slump 74.6 percent but construction held up much better, with a fall of just 4.1 percent.
The coronavirus pandemic has caused huge economic disruption around the world but Germany has managed to do better than many of its peers, with total economic output down 2.2 percent in the first three months of the year.
