- A senior member of Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU), Michael Meister
The Europe's largest economy is planning further spending cuts in order to achieve its target of a structurally balanced budget in 2014. German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble claimed his readiness to seek savings of 5-to-6 billion euros in addition to spending cuts, which are already planned. The target should be achieved, mostly, due to cuts in social spending and hikes in value-added tax and will help to balance the budget.
"If we want to reach a so-called structurally balanced budget in 2014 we have to close a gap of around 5 billion euros," the paper quoted a senior member of Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU), Michael Meister, as saying.
"This will come about only through spending cuts," he added later.
Also Friday, the Federal Statistical Office said that German retail sales rose by 2.1% during the last year. However, stripping out inflation, the turnover at retail stores dropped between 0.1% and 0.3% from a year ago. At the same time, retail sales in November gained 1.2% from the same month a year ago. The report showed that the German economy has mainly escaped the worst effects of the debt crisis.
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