Recessions

German industrial orders dropped sharply in March, official data published yesterday showed, as the Russian invasion of Ukraine hit demand.

Incoming orders were down 4.7 percent on the previous month in March, according to the federal statistics agency Destatis.

Economic growth in Latin America and the Caribbean will be lower than expected at 1.8 percent this year due to the war in Ukraine, a UN body has said. 

In 2021, the region's gross domestic product (GDP) growth was 6.2 percent, and the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) in January forecast growth of 2.1 percent for 2022.    

Asian nations, like the rest of the world, are being battered by countervailing forces such as the war in Ukraine that are raising prices while holding back growth, the IMF has said.

The International Monetary Fund on April 19 downgraded the outlook for the world economy this year and next, blaming Russia's war in Ukraine for disrupting global commerce, pushing up oil prices, threatening food supplies and increasing uncertainty already heightened by the coronavirus and its variants.

China's economic growth edged up to a still-weak 4.8 percent over a year earlier in the first three months of 2022 as industrial cities shut down to fight coronavirus outbreaks, threatening to disrupt global trade and manufacturing.

The U.S. economy ended 2021 by expanding at a brisk 7 percent annual pace from October through December, the government reported Thursday in a slight upgrade from its earlier estimate as businesses stepped up their restocking of supplies.

Germany's economy shrank at a smaller rate in the fourth quarter of last year than originally thought, despite the blows leveled by supply chain woes and the pandemic, official data showed on Feb. 25.

Gross domestic product in Europe's top economy slipped 0.3 percent in the last three months of 2021 compared to the previous quarter, the federal statistics office Destatis said.

The Commission emphasizes the positive prospects of the economy in its report on the conclusion of the 13th evaluation, while it sees the rise in energy prices as a source of uncertainty. It emphasizes, among other things, that Greece has recovered quickly from the pandemic and the prospects remain strong, although they are subject to high uncertainty.

The Bundesbank has said the latest wave of the coronavirus pandemic risked pushing the German economy - Europe's largest - into a technical recession before staging a recovery from the second quarter.

Germany's industrial production posted a decline in December 2021 by 0.3 percent versus the previous month, the country's statistical authority said yesterday.

"Compared with December 2020, the decrease in calendar-adjusted production in industry amounted to 4.1 percent," Destatis said in a press release.