In the election campaign, the governing parties like to boast of their successes during the past legislative period. However, a letter written by the General Manager of the Association of German Chambers of Industry and Commerce (DIHK), Martin Wansleben, to the members of the “Future of Industry” alliance makes it clear that self-assessment and external assessment can differ.
In the alliance founded in 2015, trade unions, industrial and employer associations and the Federal Ministry of Economics have joined forces to shape the industrial location. However, industrial companies are apparently quite dissatisfied with how the government has approached this task over the past four years. At least that is what emerges from the letter from Wansleben to his comrades-in-arms.
Efforts do not meet the increasing demands
In the letter available to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Wansleben and his deputy, Volker Treier, point out that the industrial companies rated the federal government’s economic policy as a “good three” overall; In 2014 it was a weaker 3.3.
“However, we see the fact that the companies rate the individual location factors worse in summer 2017 than they did three years ago, despite the good economy, as a warning signal for Germany’s competitiveness,” writes the DIHK general manager.
He refers to a new, as yet unpublished survey of his company among 1500 industrial companies entitled “Two steps forward, one back”. “In the interests of our industry, we must now continue to build on our strengths and eliminate our weaknesses,” writes Wansleben.
Accordingly, above all, the dissatisfaction of the industry with the broadband expansion has increased. In school grades, they now only give the grand coalition a 3.7 in this field, i.e. a “sufficient”. “No rating has deteriorated as much as this one,” warns Wansleben. In 2014 it was still enough for a “satisfactory”, in 2011 even for a narrow “good”.
In his letter, Wansleben writes: “In plain language, this means that the political goals and efforts to expand the digital infrastructure do not meet the increasing demands of companies. We must therefore do everything we can to push ahead with the expansion of the fiber optic network even more than previously planned.” In addition, every fourth company would be willing to invest more – if the IT infrastructure were better.