BERLIN (Reuters) – German Finance Minister and Free Democratic Party leader Christian Lindner said on Saturday that Germany needed to rebuild its economy to secure its geopolitical position.
Germany's economy was the weakest of any major eurozone country last year, hit by high energy costs, weak global orders and record high interest rates.
This year will be a testing year for Europe's largest economy.
In its World Economic Outlook, the International Monetary Fund lowered its forecast for Germany's gross domestic product (GDP) by 0.3 percentage points in both years, forecasting growth of 0.2% this year and 1.3% in 2025. We are anticipating it.
These forecasts are lower than the eurozone's forecasts of 0.8% for 2024 and 1.5% for 2025, and show that Germany, the only major economy to see contraction in economic growth last year, is lagging in the eurozone.
Lindner said Germany's economic weakness has security and geopolitical implications.
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“We need to rebuild the economy, because ultimately economic power is also a factor in geopolitics,” Lindner said at a party conference in Berlin, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin's war against Ukraine. .
“President Putin's goal is to use power against us, and we must never allow that to happen.” But economic growth is needed to give us the tools we need to combat it, he said.
(Reporting by Alexander Ratz; Writing by Maria Martinez; Editing by Toby Chopra)
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