German economy shrank by 0.4% in Q4, worse than 1st reported

BERLIN (AP) — Germany’s national statistics office says that the country’s economy shrank by 0.4% in last year’s fourth quarter. That’s a sharp downward revision from its initial report that gross domestic product declined by 0.2%. The quarter-on-quarter contraction in the October-December period was the first since the first quarter of 2021. Consumer spending, which propped up growth in the first nine months of last year, dropped by 1% in the final three months of 2022. The Federal Statistical Office said Friday that investment in construction and machinery showed bigger drops in the final quarter.