German factory orders rose sharply in January

According to provisional results of the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), price adjusted new orders in manufacturing rose a seasonally and calendar adjusted 5.5% in January 2020 on the previous month. Economists had expected a 1.4% increase.

The increase was due to major orders especially in the manufacture of air and spacecraft and of machinery and equipment. However, even excluding major orders, new orders in manufacturing were up a seasonally and calendar adjusted 2.3% in January 2020 on the previous month, which was due to a good general order situation in many economic branches.

Domestic orders decreased by 1.3% and foreign orders rose by 10.5% in January 2020 on the previous month. New orders from the euro area went up 15.1%, and new orders from other countries increased by 7.8% compared with December 2019.

In January 2020 the manufacturers of intermediate goods saw new orders increase by 3.5% compared with December 2019. The manufacturers of capital goods saw an increase of 7.1% on the previous month. Regarding consumer goods, new orders rose 2.9%.

For December 2019, compared with November 2019, resulted in a decrease of 2.1%, which confirmed the provisional result published earlier.