Status: 04/12/2023 9:31 p.m
Finance Minister Lindner considers the current IMF economic forecast for Germany to be too pessimistic. Although the German economy is still in a phase of weakness, he still expects slight growth.
Yesterday, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) announced that it expects Germany’s economic output to decline slightly by 0.1 percent this year – and this triggered the opposition of Finance Minister Christian Lindner today.
The German economy is still in a phase of weakness, said Lindner on the fringes of the IMF conference in Washington. Germany is not growing as strongly and is not developing as well as others. “Our partners, our friends, our competitors are sometimes developing more dynamically than Germany”.
Nevertheless, the IMF’s recession forecast is too pessimistic. “That does not match the expectations we have regarding the growth prospects of the German economy,” he said. The German economic research institutes are also more optimistic. At the beginning of April, the German institutes had predicted mini-growth in gross domestic product of 0.3 percent.
Lindner indicated that the next time the traffic light coalition updates its economic forecasts, it is likely to become even more confident. The new forecast may be closer to the latest estimates from the leading economic research institutes.
Lindner feels confirmed by the IWF in the course
Lindner feels confirmed by the IMF’s recommendation to consolidate public budgets and fight inflation by reducing government spending. “This advice should be taken very seriously. As you know, the federal government takes this advice extremely seriously,” he emphasized.
The time of pure distribution policy in Germany is over. “We now have to invest again, renew, initiate structural reforms,” said Lindner. “Because with the prosperity of the past, we can no longer represent the social security of today and tomorrow.”
Lindner again campaigned for a tax growth package that should strengthen the competitiveness and productivity of the German economy. Most recently, he had suggested, among other things, investment bonuses, tax incentives for research and new depreciation options