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Almost all major indicators are now showing worrying downtrends. The business climate index of the Munich ifo Institute, for example, recently fell for the third time in a row. The 9,000 managers surveyed rated both the current situation of their companies and the prospects for the coming six months worse than before.
However, all these negative developments in Germany are not a sudden phenomenon, but have been reflected in various studies and rankings for a long time. In this year’s “World Competitiveness Ranking” by the Swiss business school IMD, Germany fell back to 22nd place. 365 criteria from four areas flow into the evaluation of the ranking.