BERLIN (Reuters) – The German economy is expected to shrink this year for the first time since the world financial crisis in 2009, a senior economist of private lender Deutsche Bank said on Tuesday, pointing to the impact of the coronavirus epidemic.
Stefan Schneider, chief German economist at Deutsche Bank, told Reuters he expected Germany’s gross domestic product to decline by 0.2% in 2020 after an expansion of 0.6% last year.
The German economy, Europe’s largest, is seen contracting by 0.2% quarter-on-quarter in the first three months of the year and then shrinking by 0.8% in the second quarter, Schneider said.
(Reporting by Rene Wagner; Writing by Michael Nienaber; Editing by Thomas Seythal)
