Scenario update 9/2011

2011

Our last scenario about the economy was optimistic: "Three times three" is what we said at the start of the year – meaning three consecutive years of at least 3% growth for Germany. Our reasoning was that manufacturing skills in particular will count in future. We also saw no sign of slackening growth in markets such as China, India and Brazil – markets that are important to Germany and from which our healthy manufacturing sector should therefore derive above-average benefits. In addition, we believed that domestic demand too would plot a positive graph on the back of all this good news.

So far, we have been right. Contrary to the view taken by many established organizations, China's growth has been and still is robust, India has failed to fall behind, and both Brazil and Russia are doing far better than most observers expected. We hit our first threesome easily (3.7% in 2010) and are on course to repeat the performance after a strong first half of 2011. But will things stay this way? Or are we going to see a rerun of 2008 after all? And above all: What about 2012? In light of current turbulence, plus the chaos on the capital markets, many have asked us whether we still stand by our upbeat forecast and how we rate developments going forward. Well, here is our attempt at an answer.