Germany Business Confidence

Last Release

May 31, 2025

Actual

87.5

Units In

Points

86.9

Frequency

Monthly

Next Release

Jun 24, 2025

Time to Release

30 Days 22 Hours

Highest	Lowest	Average	Date Range	Source
109.8 Jan 1991	75.4 Apr 2020	96.85 Points	1991-2025	IFO Institute

In Germany, the IFO Business Climate Index measures entrepreneurs’ sentiment about current business situation and their expectations for the next 6 months. The survey is made by phone and covers 9,000 firms in manufacturing, the service sector, trade and construction. The Business Climate Balance is constructed as the difference between the percentage share of executives that are optimistic and the share that are pessimistic. This balance can take values between -100 (all responding firms assess their situation as poor and expect business to deteriorate) and +100 (all responding firms assessed their situation as good and expect an improvement in their business). For the calculation of the IFO Business Climate Index, the Balance is normalized to the average of a base year (currently 2015).

Latest Updates

The Ifo Business Climate indicator for Germany edged up to 87.5 in May 2025, the highest in eleven months, compared to 86.9 in April and slightly better than forecasts of 87.4. The expectations gauge rose to 88.9 from 87.4 while the index measuring current conditions edged down to 86.1 from 86.4. "The recent sharp rise in uncertainty among companies has eased somewhat. The German economy is slowly regaining its footing”, Ifo President Clemens Fuest said. Business sentiment saw a notable improvement in the manufacturing sector, driven in particular by strong optimism in the food industry. However, confidence in the chemical sector weakened slightly. In the services sector, sentiment continued to improve, with the transport and logistics segment rebounding from the recent decline triggered by tariff-related concerns. Retail and construction sectors also reported a pickup in sentiment.