Investing.com - German economic growth slowed from a year earlier in 2013, a preliminary estimate from the Federal Statistics Office showed on Wednesday, as the crisis in the euro zone acted as a drag on growth in the region’s largest member.
German gross domestic product grew by 0.4% in 2013, the statistics office Destatis said, following growth of 0.7% in 2012. Analysts had been expecting growth of 0.5%.
Destatis said the German economy expanded by "around a quarter of a percent" in the fourth quarter after growth of 0.3% in the third quarter.
“On an annual average, the German economy remained stable overall in 2013," Destatis said.
Economic growth last year was driven by strong domestic demand, with private consumption rising by 0.9% and government spending up 1.1%.
The statistics office said German trade was "less dynamic" than usual last year, due to sluggish external demand. German exports rose just 0.6%, down from 3.2% in 2012, while imports rose 1.3%.
"It seems that the German economy was hit by the ongoing recession in a number of European countries and the sluggish global economy," Destatis President Roderich Egeler said.
"Strong domestic demand could only partially compensate for this. Nevertheless, after the period of weakness last winter, the economic situation improved through the course of 2013".
In December, Germany’s Bundesbank forecast that German GDP would expand 1.7% in 2014 and 2% in 2015, saying that the “economy is in good shape, the unemployment rate is low, employment is rising and wage growth is returning to normal.”