BERLIN, Feb. 6 (Xinhua) -- Price and calendar adjusted new orders in Germany's manufacturing industry decreased by 8.7 percent in December 2019 compared to the last year, the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) announced on Thursday.
Compared to the previous month, new orders in the manufacturing industry in December still decreased by 2.1 percent, according to Destatis.
"The weak development of incoming orders in December 2019 underlines that the industrial crisis is not yet over," Juergen Matthes, head of the research unit international economics and economic outlook of the German Economic Institute (IW), told Xinhua on Thursday.
First signs of improvement from economic indicators would also need to show in the new order figures, "before one can talk about the hope for stabilization", added Matthes.
Domestic orders increased by 1.4 percent while orders from the euro zone even fell by 13.9 percent. At the same time, new orders from other countries went up by 2.1 percent, according to Destatis.
Manufacturers of intermediate goods in Germany saw their new orders increase by 1.4 percent.
Recent industry surveys had shown that "the expectations of managers have brightened up in the past months", Axel Lindner, deputy head of the Department Macroeconomics, Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH) told Xinhua. Although the downward trend in orders continued, the pace had slowed down at the end of 2019.
