(Bloomberg) -- More effort is required to get Germany’s economy out of its current rut, according to Bundesbank President Joachim Nagel.
“The economic development is flat, possibly it will be at 0% at the end of the year — maybe a bit higher, maybe a bit lower,” he said on Sunday. “We now have to make an effort to get the economic problems that we have, the structural problems, under control.”
Speaking at his institution’s open day in Frankfurt, he highlighted public infrastructure, digitization and demographics as core issues.
“Unfortunately, we have an aging population,” he said. “We have to look at how we manage to get qualified people into jobs where we are clearly suffering from demographic problems.”
Germany’s economy unexpectedly contracted in the second quarter and economists are wary of its prospects for 2024, predicting annual growth of just 0.1%. Recent news from the automotive industry — including Volkswagen AG’s warning that it might shutter factories — are only exacerbating the situation.
Nagel warned that there are “no quick or easy solutions” to the current challenges, adding that “economic progress, competitiveness, requires a joint effort from all of us.”
He also cautioned against “those who often think they have the simple solutions at hand.”
“If you look closely, you see that these are no solutions at all,” Nagel said. Instead, implementing these suggestions “would make things worse.”
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