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German economy will grind to halt in 2009: experts
AFP - Thursday, November 13
BERLIN (AFP) - - A panel of top economists said on Wednesday German economic growth would grind to a halt in 2009 and blasted Berlin's plans to shore up Europe's biggest economy as a mere fig leaf.
The group of five economists handed Chancellor Angela Merkel the grim report in which they forecast stagnation and a rise in unemployment and said the government's announced measures would be of little help.
Gross domestic product (GDP) will grow 0.0 percent next year, after an expected gain of 1.7 percent this year, said the economists who were known as the Five Wise Men until a woman, Beatrice Weder di Mauro, joined in 2004.
Berlin recently cut its forecast for economic growth to a mere 0.2 percent in 2009 as the financial crisis continues to send shock waves around the world.
The panel said "the conditions are in place to talk about recession," given the brutal nature of the slowdown.
The government will publish figures for third-quarter growth Thursday and if it contracted for the second three-month-period running, as widely expected, the world's top exporter will already be officially in recession.
The economists dismissed a recent multi-billion-euro bundle of tax breaks and state investment as a "hotch-potch of isolated projects designed to give the impression that the government is doing something."
It said the package was far too small to have a real impact, and was skewed toward specific industries such as automaking thanks to heavy lobbying.
The experts called for more government spending to improve infrastructure and the educational system, even if it meant increasing the public debt.
Merkel acknowledged her left-right government was grappling with a crisis that was difficult to manage or fully understand and said Berlin was doing its best to help the country weather the storm.
"We are in a situation now in which it is extremely difficult for all of us to know exactly what the future will bring," she said as she was presented with the report in Berlin.
The experts noted that Germany's "real economy" had as yet remained relatively unscathed by the global turmoil but it forecast that unemployment would rise 1.1 percentage points next year.
Last week Merkel's cabinet approved a 23-billion-euro (29-billion-dollar) stimulus package aimed at stimulating the economy with an extra 50 billion euros in investment in 2009 and 2010, in what she called a "bridge" for the economy until activity picks up.
Government leaders agreed late Tuesday to scrap the tax on new cars bought in the first half of 2009 and cars that emit fewer greenhouse gases will be exempt for up to two years.
The stimulus measures were approved less than three weeks after Merkel's government rushed through parliament a 480-billion-euro rescue package to save the country's banks from collapse.
Merkel has stressed the stimulus measures are "targeted," after Berlin was highly critical of proposals by French President Nicolas Sarkozy -- whose country holds the current EU presidency -- for Europe-wide state intervention on a massive scale.
But economists are sceptical about whether the measures will do the trick.
The daily Financial Times Deutschland said in an editorial Wednesday based on leaked copies of the report that it hoped Merkel and her cabinet would heed the panel's advice.
"The experts' report could be the last chance to move the coalition towards a re-think," it said. "If the government doesn't even listen to a committee of experts it appointed itself then that would really give cause for despair."
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A view of downtown Frankfurt's financial centre, October 2008. A panel of top economists said Wednesday German economic growth would grind to a halt in 2009 and blasted Berlin's plans to shore up Europe's biggest economy as a mere fig leaf.
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