Despite the euro and financial crisis the majority of German business associations are assuming there will be a slightly improved profit situation in 2012: 26 out of 46 associations are counting on slightly increasing profits, nine do not expect any change and eleven a slight decline in business results. This is the central result of this year’s association survey from the Institut der deutschen Wirtschaft Köln (IW, or the Cologne Institute for Economic Research). However, 23 of the 46 business associations surveyed said the mood among their member companies was currently worse than one year ago. Only eleven talked about a more positive mood.

In terms of investment and employment figures the large majority of sectors – 29 and 31 respectively – expect values to remain the same at least. The survey painted a more positive picture than could be expected in view of the recent drastically lowered growth forecasts, according to the interpretation of the result by the IW.

Despite the financial and debt crises, companies in Germany do not expect a recession. Half of businesses are also assuming that next year will see a constant business situation. Around 31 per cent even expect growth in production in 2012, nearly 19 expect a decline. This conclusion was reached by the Institut der deutschen Wirtschaft Cologne (IW, or Cologne Institute for Economic Research) in its current autumn growth survey, for which almost 2,600 companies were surveyed in Western and Eastern Germany. When estimating revenue developments the picture is unclear: 27.6 per cent of those surveyed expect higher revenues while 24.5 per cent are assuming declining results. What is interesting here is that companies in Eastern Germany expect better revenues than companies in the former West Germany.

However, businesses’ export outlooks have clouded over more markedly. Admittedly almost 24 per cent of businesses expect their exports to rise and only around 13 per cent expect a fall. But six months earlier companies assessed foreign business considerably more optimistically. Businesses also showed themselves to be somewhat more reserved in their investment plans than in 2010 – currently nearly 30 per cent of companies want to spend more and almost 20 per less on new acquisitions in 2012 than in this year.

Manufacturing industry and the service sector are showing themselves to be particularly keen on investing while the construction sector is tending to assume budget cuts. Luckily the bleaker prospects for growth are hardly having any effect on the employment market: most companies expect stable levels of employment in 2012 and 25 per cent of businesses even want to expand their number of employees next year.