Expected investment and the economy

Company expectations about future investment partly depend on how these companies expect the economy to develop. An increasing or high level of producer confidence, for example, often goes hand in hand with optimistic expectations of investment spending. In times of declining or low levels of producer confidence, the opposite is true.

Producer confidence and expected investment in manufacturing (May and October reports)

Sometimes companies change their investment course in the course of the year, making it interesting to compare planned investment with economic development.

Expected and realised investment in manufacturing (changes on preceding year)

Producer confidence has risen substantially since March 1999, although it levelling off at the end of 2000. At the same time, companies reported an expected investment increase of 22% in 2000 compared with 1999. However, at the end of 2000, the realised increase in investment was only 13%. At that time manufacturers were also only moderately optimistic about investment spending in 2001, foreseeing only a 5% rise.

Petra Brocke