Through its academic survey, the Research Centre of the Deutsche Bundesbank is obtaining a picture of the current situation among firms in Germany and gaining greater insight into their expectations for the coming months. Over time, the survey also provides crucial information on changes within the corporate sector.

In the second quarter of 2024, 15% of firms reported conducting negotiations with a view to taking out a loan in the previous quarter. This share was 1 percentage point higher than in the first quarter of 2024. It thus returned to a level similar to those recorded in the last three quarters of 2023 and was significantly higher than the lowest level of 12.5% seen in the first quarter of 2023.

Between the first and second quarters of 2024, there was for the most part no change in how firms’ key business indicators developed over the past 12 months. Amongst other things, 32% of firms reported a decrease in short-term liquidity in the second quarter, while 20% reported an increase. The gap between these two figures thus widened by just over 1 percentage point compared with the previous quarter, though the change was small by historical standards.

In the second quarter of 2024, there was only a slight quarter-on-quarter change in firms’ expectations over the next 12 months. Expected short-term liquidity, amongst other things, improved slightly on the first quarter. The second quarter saw 28% of firms expect liquidity to decrease over the next 12 months, while 17% expected liquidity to increase. The gap between these two groups thus narrowed by just under 5 percentage points compared with the first quarter of 2024.

High levels of regulation and government rules overtook shortages of labour as the biggest short-term challenge in the first quarter of 2024: 67% of firms considered regulation to be a pressing problem over the next six months, while 62% reported the same for the labour market situation. At 54%, the share of firms that saw high production and labour costs as problematic for the next six months also remained at a high level. By contrast, the share of firms for which access to intermediate inputs was a pressing problem for the next six months fell again, reaching just 12% in March 2024. In the first quarter of 2024, firms were also surveyed for the first time regarding their assessment of energy prices. The proportion of firms that considered energy prices to be fairly unproblematic in the short term increased slightly over the quarter to 25%, while around half of firms – with this share falling slightly to 50% during the quarter – saw energy prices as a pressing problem over the next six months.