Many German companies active in the manufacturing sector have been cutting back on their use of natural gas with only minor restrictions on production, the ifo Institute for Economic Research said on Tuesday citing a recent survey.
However, "this will become more difficult in the future," it said.
In the past six months, 75 percent of companies surveyed that used natural gas in their production processes managed to reduce gas consumption without curtailing production, the Munich-based think tank said.
"This large proportion is encouraging, but the differences between industries are significant," Karen Pittel, director of the ifo Center for Energy, Climate and Resources, said in a statement.
The automotive industry and the machinery and equipment manufacturers were more successful in cutting gas consumption without production losses than the energy-intensive chemical industry, where the success rate was only 60 percent, the survey showed.
Due to the production cuts caused by the natural gas shortage, the situation in the country's chemical industry remains tense. "There are no signs of improvement in the coming months --on the contrary. The lowest point has probably not yet been reached," a spokesperson for the German Chemicals Industry Association (VCI) told Xinhua on Tuesday.
Compared to the second half of last year, gas prices for businesses and public authorities increased by 39 percent in the first half of 2022 and electricity was around 19 percent more expensive, the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) said.
Regarding the next six months, 41.4 percent of industrial companies said that the "only way for them to save more gas is if they cut back production," the ifo Institute said. The figures were particularly high in the glass and ceramics, pharmaceutical and chemical industries.
The energy crisis is "weighing on production, especially in the energy-intensive industries," the German Council of Economic Experts (GCEE) said in its annual report in early November. The country's economy is expected to slide into recession in 2023, with the gross domestic product (GDP) declining by 0.2 percent.
Editor: Galia
