Thanks to the settlement of the car manufacturer Tesla, Brandenburg achieved by far the greatest economic growth nationwide in the first half of the year. From January to June, the gross domestic product (GDP) in the eastern German state rose by 6.0 percent within a year, as the state statistics office announced on Friday. “Vehicle construction has given the economy a big boost,” statistics expert Benjamin Gampfer told Reuters. “That is the main driver why Brandenburg is so much above the national average.”
Hamburg achieved the second largest GDP increase with 1.7 percent, ahead of Lower Saxony with 0.9 percent. At the bottom were Rhineland-Palatinate – due to weak industry – with minus 5.4 percent and Saxony-Anhalt (-3.2 percent). Nationwide, GDP shrank by 0.3 percent. Experts expect something similar for the year as a whole.
The electric car manufacturer Tesla has a large factory in Grünheide, Brandenburg, near Berlin. Economists explain Brandenburg’s good performance with the success of the US group. “Yes, that is Tesla,” said the head of the Ifo Dresden branch, Marcel Thum, to Reuters. According to the Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH), the Tesla effect will increase gross value added in the manufacturing sector in Brandenburg by a good 13 percent as early as 2022. The key driver of growth is the industry’s investments in electromobility, said deputy managing director Alexander Schirp from the Berlin-Brandenburg business associations (UVB). “It’s not just Tesla that needs to be mentioned here.” Many suppliers have settled throughout Brandenburg and formed a value chain around this new industry.
“A growth core is being created here that will bring a boost and new prosperity to the entire region.” Brandenburg’s Minister of Economic Affairs, Jörg Steinbach, emphasized that the manufacturing of automobiles and automobile parts has developed into the industry with the highest sales and employment in the state in recent years – “which is largely due to the ramp-up of production at Tesla.” The decisive factor here is not just the US company, but also the “supplier industry and the battery materials industry”.
While Tesla is causing a one-off effect on GDP growth in Brandenburg, Rhineland-Palatinate is feeling a kind of boomerang. According to the statistics office, the sharp decline in economic strength is primarily due to “individual sectors that benefited from the development and production of a vaccine against the coronavirus in 2021”. The business success of the Mainz company Biontech with its Covid-19 vaccine boosted the economy significantly at the time.
According to a study, Berlin will become the German champion in terms of economic growth in the medium term. The capital’s GDP will be around eleven percent larger in 2030 than at the end of 2023, according to the analysis by the European rating agency Scope. “Due to demographic developments, we predict that Berlin will be the fastest-growing regional economy in Germany with an average real growth rate of 1.5 percent.” Bavaria comes in second place ahead of Saxony.