BERLIN, Jan. 14 (Xinhua) -- Germany's gross domestic product (GDP) fell by 5.0 percent year-on-year in 2020 in the wake of the coronavirus crisis, the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) said on Thursday.
"After a ten-year growth period, the German economy suffered a deep recession," Destatis noted. However, according to provisional calculations, the economic slump was less severe than during the 2009 financial crisis, when Germany's economy shrank by 5.7 percent.
The contraction was much smaller than many experts had feared in the course of the year, said German Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy Peter Altmaier at a press conference here on Thursday.
Albert Braakmann, who heads Destatis' National Accounts section, said the German economy "has come relatively well through the crisis" in 2020 compared with many other nations, German news agency dpa reported.
Altmaier is confident that the economy will return to growth in 2021 despite the pandemic, saying that Europe's biggest economy will recover this year and "there will be an upswing year," dpa said.
The German government will continue to provide the necessary financial resources "to protect the German economy from an irreversible loss of substance," Altmaier stressed.
However, the coronavirus pandemic left "clear traces" in almost all economic sectors in Germany last year, according to Destatis. Production was "severely scaled-down" both in the service sector and in industry.
The country's industry -- excluding construction, which accounts for about a quarter of its overall economy -- saw output fall by 9.7 percent year-on-year. The economic output of the important manufacturing sector even fell by 10.4 percent.
Despite the COVID-19-induced recession, online trade increased significantly. Another sector in Germany that could sustain its business during the pandemic was construction, where gross value added increased by 1.4 percent year-on-year.
Germany's foreign trade, on the other hand, was "massively impacted" by the crisis, Destatis noted. Exports and imports of goods and services fell for the first time since 2009. German exports decreased by 9.9 percent in price-adjusted terms and imports decreased by 8.6 percent.
In 2020, the German labor force shrank by 477,000 people, or 1.1 percent, year-on-year, ending a 14-year surge in employment due to the coronavirus pandemic.
According to preliminary calculations, Germany's general government budget closed last year with a financing deficit of 158.2 billion euros (191.8 billion U.S. dollars). "It was the first deficit since 2011 and the second highest deficit since the German reunification," Destatis noted. Enditem
