BERLIN: German industrial production increased in April, as a recovery in the euro area and accelerating growth at home buoyed demand.
Output, adjusted for seasonal swings and inflation, rose 0.9 percent after falling a revised 0.4 percent in March, data from the Economy Ministry in Berlin showed on Monday. The typically-volatile number compares with a median estimate for a 0.6 percent gain in a Bloomberg Survey. Output climbed 1.4 percent from a year earlier.
After a lackluster phase, German manufacturers are benefiting from faster growth at home and tailwinds from the euro-area recovery. The Bundesbank boosted its forecast last week for the domestic economy, Europe’s largest — though the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development cut its own world growth outlook.
“Fundamentally, the domestic-demand strength is still in place, as is the buoyant labor market,” said Ben May, an economist at Oxford Economics Ltd. in London. “There are lingering worries that later in the year emerging-market weakness could affect Germany via weaker exports.”
Manufacturing output climbed 0.7 percent from the previous month and production of investment goods gained 1.5 percent, the report showed. Energy output increased 1.4 percent and construction advanced 1.3 percent. Consumer-goods production fell 0.9 percent.
The world economy will expand 3.1 percent this year, down from the 3.7 percent predicted last October, the Paris-based OECD said in a semi-annual report on June 3.
Even so, the Bundesbank forecast on Friday that German gross domestic product will expand 1.7 percent in 2015 and 1.8 percent in 2016. That compares with December predictions of 1 percent and 1.6 percent, respectively.
Factory orders, a gauge of future output, climbed for a second month in April. Orders gained 1.4 percent, lifted by a surge of 6.8 percent from the rest of the 19-nation currency bloc. German unemployment fell for an eighth month in May and the jobless rate held at 6.4 percent, the lowest level since the country’s reunification.
