ifo economic indicators in the automotive industry Germany 2023-2025
The ifo Business Climate Index in the automotive industry continued to improve in April 2025, but at -30.7 points, it still remained clearly in negative territory. Since June 2023, the index has consistently stayed in the negative range. In contrast, the value for production plans returned to positive territory at 0.6 points.
What is the ifo Business Climate?
The ifo Business Climate is an indicator for economic activity in Germany. It is based on approximately 9,000 monthly responses from businesses in manufacturing, the service sector, trade, and construction. Companies are asked to give their assessments of the current business situation and their expectations for the next six months. They can describe their situation as “good,” “satisfactory,” or “poor” and their business expectations for the next six months as “more favorable,” “unchanged,” or “less favorable.” The balance value of the current business situation is the difference in the percentage shares of the responses “good” and “poor”; the balance value of expectations is the difference in the percentage shares of the responses “more favorable” and “less favorable.” The business climate is a transformed mean of the balances of the business situation and the expectations. To calculate the index values, the transformed balances are all normalized to the average for the year 2015.
