"Per Capita Cost Three Times EU Average" Analysis Included
Germany's economy, the largest in Europe, is estimated to have lost more than 160 billion euros (235 trillion won) over two years due to the war in Ukraine.
On the 19th (local time), according to the news outlet Der Spiegel, the German Ministry of Economic Affairs assumed that if the war had not occurred, the gross domestic product (GDP) would have grown by 3% annually, and calculated the cost of the war by comparing the actual GDP from 2022 to 2023 with this assumption.
Germany's GDP growth rate was 3.2% in 2021, but it dropped to 1.8% in 2022, the first year of the Ukraine war, and contracted by 0.3% last year.
The German government responded to a query from Left Party member J?rg Schindler, adding that "it is difficult to accurately calculate economic losses due to overlapping external negative factors such as COVID-19 in recent years."
The private sector estimates the cost of the war to Germany to be even higher than the government's figures. The German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) analyzed that the economic loss over two years exceeds 200 billion euros (approximately 294 trillion won).
Due to its manufacturing-centered industrial structure, Germany's economy has been hit harder by the Ukraine war and the energy crisis than neighboring countries.
Sebastian Dullien of the Hans B?ckler Foundation think tank estimated, based on the International Monetary Fund (IMF)'s 2021 GDP forecasts for various countries, that the economic loss per capita during the war period was 2,600 euros (approximately 3.83 million won) annually. This figure is nearly three times the European Union (EU) average of 880 euros (approximately 1.3 million won).
On the 16th, the IMF's World Economic Outlook (WEO) update projected Germany's economic growth rate to be 0.2% this year and 1.5% next year, each 0.3 percentage points lower than the forecast three months ago.
© The Asia Business Daily(www.asiae.co.kr). All rights reserved.
