Germany PMI Manufacturing dropped from 47.3 to 46.5 in February. PMI Services rose from 50.7 to 51.3, an 8-month high. PMI Composite rose from 49.9 to 51.1, also an 8-month high.
Phil Smith, Economics Associate Director at S&P Global Market Intelligence said:
“February’s flash PMI survey showed the German private sector economy return to growth territory for the first time eight months, alongside continued resilience in the labour market and a further slight recovery in business confidence.
“Encouragingly, the increase in business activity was broad-based by sector. However, whereas the upturn in services activity was at least partly demand-related, higher manufacturing output owed almost exclusively to a substantial easing of supply-chain bottlenecks, which merely allowed goods producers to catch up on backlogs of work. With manufacturing new orders still in contraction territory, goods producers remain only cautiously optimistic about the year-ahead outlook, and they will likely need to see demand revive for that to change.
“The cooling of demand in the goods-producing sector and subsequent easing of supply-chain pressures has seen factory input costs start to fall. Still, like their service sector counterparts who once again highlighted particularly strong wage demands, manufacturers continued to raise their output prices at a robust rate during February, signalling that core inflationary pressures remain elevated. However, the rate of increase in average prices charged for goods and services continued to slow, down to its lowest since May 2021.”
