Pandemic restrictions mostly must be blamed for a decline, Bundesbank said, with steps “hit several branches of the hard service sector”.

The Bundesbank said on Monday the latest waves of the Pandemic Coronavirus at risk of encouraging the German economy – the largest in Europe – becoming a technical recession before recovery from the second quarter.

After gross domestic product shrank by 0.7 percent in the last quarter of 2021, “overall economic output can sink significantly in the first quarter of 2022, before taking speed again in the spring,” the German Central Bank said in its monthly economic report. .

Pandemic restrictions mostly must be blamed for a decline, Bundesbank said, with steps “hit several branches of the hard service sector”.

Manufacturing, meanwhile, continues to report “serious” problems with the lack of raw materials and components, and labor shortages.

“However, pick-up in industrial production, however, suggests certain easing” in a supply situation at the end of 2021, the central bank said.

A recession is fully defined as two quarters of consecutive economic contractions.

European European neighbors have seen their economy recover stronger than the initial impact of the pandemic.

Germany registered 2.8 percent growth in 2021, while France surged in the future with seven percent growth.

The spread of omicron variants in Germany caused a number of infections at the beginning of the year.

The government said it would begin to roll back health restrictions because cases began to row up, with most rules lifted at the end of March under plans.