Increase in household final consumption expenditure due to green rebate for cars
WIESBADEN – Households in Germany spent some EUR 36 billion on purchases of motor vehicles in the first half of 2009. This is reported by the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) in addition to the press release on “First stocktaking after introduction of green rebate” of 17 August. Compared with the first half of the previous year, that is an increase by 23%. Those purchases thus made a considerable contribution to domestic demand. As a consequence, total final consumption expenditure of households rose slightly by 0.1% in the first half of 2009 compared with the first six months of 2008. Without the purchases of passenger cars, household final consumption expenditure would have been down by 1.0%. A conclusion to be drawn from the national accounting results is that private purchases of motor vehicles can have a considerable impact on final consumption expenditure of households. In 2006 such purchases were much higher than in the previous years, which was due to anticipatory effects regarding the VAT rise planned for 2007. They rose by 7.8% on 2005. In 2007 and 2008, however, the purchases decreased by 8.8% and 3.9%, respectively. For further information please call: Michael Burghardt, tel: (+49-611) 75-2606,
