BERLIN, April 15 (Xinhua) -- Leading German economic research institutes are expecting an increase in the gross domestic product (GDP) of 3.7 percent in 2021, according to a joint spring forecast published on Thursday.
The new wave of COVID-19 infections in Germany and the renewed shutdown was "delaying the economic recovery," and led to a downward revision of the 2021 forecast by one percentage point compared with the previous report in fall last year, the economic institutes said in a statement.
"We expect a vigorous expansion of economic activities as the measures are gradually lifted over the course of the six months through the summer, especially in the services sector that was particularly affected by the pandemic," said Torsten Schmidt, Chief Economist at Leibniz Institute for Economic Research (RWI) in the statement.
Germany's economy was "likely to return to normal output levels around the start of the coming year," the institute's noted. For 2022, a GDP growth in Germany of 3.9 percent is expected.
Regarding the international economy, the institutes forecast an upswing "once the spell of the pandemic is lifted." However, the individual parts of the world were recovering with a time lag.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the eurozone would continue to lag behind, and production was even expected to decline significantly in the first quarter, the forecast found.
In China, the economy was running at full speed at the turn of the year, but lower purchasing managers' indices again point to a moderate slowdown in spring. However, the institutes rose their GDP forecast by 0.5 percentage points to a growth of 9.5 percent in 2021.
The findings of the joint forecast were compiled by RWI in cooperation with a number of other institutes. Enditem