German manufacturing orders suffered their biggest drop for a half century in January, leading engineering industry association VDMA has revealed.
Orders in the first month of 2009 were down 42% on the year before; a demise contributed to by a 47% fall in export orders and a 31% drop in domestic demand.
And things aren’t expected to recover quickly. “Orders were in record territory going well into the spring of 2008. For this reason alone better news from the engineering sector is likely to remain rare for some time yet,” VDMA chief economist Ralph Wiechers said in a statement.
Germany is the world’s largest exporter of goods, according to Reuters.
