German economy sees record growth

Growth is up

While some European countries are still climbing out of the recession, Germany has seen record growth over the past quarter, with the economy growing 2.2 percent - the country's fastest quarterly growth in more than 20 years.

It was stated by Destatis, the national statistics office, that Germany's growth was down to strong exports coupled with a weak euro. In comparison, the economy for the whole eurozone only grew by one percent, while the French economy only increased by 0.6 percent.

It was even worse for some other European states; the Spanish economy grew by 0.2 percent in the second quarter, compared with growth of 0.1 percent in the previous three months, its National Statistics Institute said.

German growth

Destatis said of the German growth that "such quarter-on-quarter growth has never been recorded before in reunified Germany". The statistic offer also revised up the German growth figure for the first three months of the year, to 0.5 percent from 0.2 percent.

The stat office said it had only expected growth of one to 1.5 percent but that strong exports as well as household and government spending had helped to boost growth in the second quarter.

Despite the current strong growth, economists don't believe it will continue, saying that the current momentum is not sustainable in the coming months and that once export growth normalises, the German growth will defer back to more standard rates of growth.

The German Economy Minister, Rainer Bruederle was quoted by the BBC as saying the latest quarterly GDP figures would "make growth of well above 2 percent possible for 2010".

The current boom has also been aided by a major one-off investment in the construction industry.

Despite European economic recovery gaining pace in the last quarter, the US has not been as fortunate with growth falling to 2.4 percent from 3.7 percent.

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