20/05/2020 – German electric industry
ZVEI Foreign Trade Report, edition May 2020
In March 2020 the exports of the German electric industry came to €17.6bn. Thereby, they failed their pre year level by 4.4%.
German electric industry – Exports by countries/regions. © Destatis/ZVEI
German electric industry – Exports and imports. © Destatis/ZVEI
However, the decline in deliveries abroad was smaller than the decreases in new orders, production and sales in the same month. In the full first quarter of this year the sector’s aggregate exports fell by 1.8% (year over year) to €52.8bn. With €15.2bn the German imports of electrical and electronic products were down by 4.4% (again compared to a year earlier) in March, too. Accumulated from January through March 2020 they mounted up to €47.5bn. The decline by 3.4% compared to the first quarter of 2019 was almost twice as high as the fall in exports.
While the electric exports to the euro area sagged by 12.0% (year on year rate) to €5.1bn in March, the deliveries to the USA were still positive and those to China picked up again. The former rose by 6.5% to €1.7bn and
the latter were 7.3% up and came to €1.9bn. The exports to Italy, France and the Netherlands plummeted by 19.3% to €715m, 14.6% to €1.0bn and 11.9% to €832m, respectively. In the entire first three months of this year the sector’s deliveries to the euro zone of €16.7bn failed their pre year level by 5.9% (exports to Italy: -9.9% to €2.3bn; to France: -6.1% to €3.1bn; to the Netherlands: -11.2% to €2.4bn). In contrast, the deliveries to the USA were 3.9% on the rise in the first quarter and amounted to €4.9bn. The exports to China increased by 2.5% to €5.2bn.
Regarding imports, the same discrepancy as with exports appeared in March. The deliveries from the euro area decreased by 12.2% (yoy) to €2.6bn, whereas the imports from China were slightly on the rise (by 0.9% to 4.0bn), and the deliveries to the USA even picked up by a two digit rate (+14.4% to €1.1bn). The imports from the Czech Republic fell by 15.5% to €760m in March. At the same time, the deliveries from Poland and Hungary declined by 7.7% to €727m and 2.8% to €655m, respectively. In the first quarter of 2020 the electric imports from the euro zone dropped by 8.2% (yoy) to €9.0bn. The deliveries from the Czech Republic sagged by 10.2% to
€2.4bn, but the imports from Poland (+0.2% to €2.3bn) and Hungary (±0.0% to €2.0bn) stayed the same. The deliveries from the USA were still able to go up by 12.1% to €3.4bn between January and March, but the imports
from China were on the decline (-4.0% to €12.0bn).
