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Home | Update | LATEST ISSUE | Gallery | FR Profile | Datafiles | FR 3/98 HIGH-TECH COUNTRY GERMANY? by Norbert Burgner "Germany is on the way to becoming a high-tech country." This is the message Dr Jürgen Rüttgers, the German minister for Education, Science, Research and Technology (BMBF), gave us in his report "About Germany's Technological Efficiency". On the world market for high-tech goods, Germany is said to have almost caught up with the leading nations Japan and the USA. In Europe, states the minister, Germany leads ahead of the U.K. and France. Rüttgers, however, neglects the fact that the German government's investment in research and development when compared with the Gross National Product, is only as much as that of Israel. The USA and especially Japan however, have managed to expand their budgets steadily. The potential for development in Germany's Aerospace Industry (LRI) is not mentioned at all in the minister's speech - not without reason. According to Rüttgers, top technologies in Germany had improved tremendously and were at the forefront of the growth hierarchy (they contributed 11.7 per cent to the national industry production). In 1994 the contribution was only 10 per cent - an increase, claims Rüttgers, of 17 per cent in only three years. To heighten the effect the decimal point may slip some time. The fact is that Germany in areas of high technology (including information and communication technology, medicine and medication technology and aerospace) is lagging behind significantly. Rüttgers, who likes to call himself "Minister of the Future", knows that. He recently asked the german Ifo Institute for Economic Studies to come up with with a corresponding analysis. The results of this inquiry prove the above claims. Everything started so well: According to the Ifo report, (documenting the techno-political efficiency of the german aerospace industry), up until the end of the 80's the aerospace sector was seen as the growth industry par excellence. The civil markets were expanding rapidly, government subsidies for research and technology were increasing on the back of ambitious air and space programs. In all, between 1980 and 1990 the industry's turnover in Germany with a growth of 87 percent was nearly doubled. There were 95,000 employees by 1990, in 1980 there had only been 66,000. In an increasingly global world the German Aerospace Industry developed clearly above average. In the first half of the 90's this situation changed dramatically. Between 1990 and 1995 the turnover dwindled by 49 per cent under the auspices of a world wide fall in demand and the growing defence cuts, employment fell to 63,000 people, fewer than in 1980. Subsidies for the branch were reduced by more than half between 1990 and 1995, more than in any other European country, let alone the USA. According to the latest figures from the Society of German Aerospace Companies the number of employees working in their Industry is currently around 60,000. Nevertheless, there is a positive note, as turnover increased by 11 per cent in 1996 and the current boom gives rise to an estimated 20 per cent growth for 1997. However, public funding is still lacking but politicians are playing down the issue - whereat business with the public finance transfer in the top technology area is profitable. During its development the German Government had subsidised the Airbus-A320-narrow body fleet with 1.34 billion DM. Until 1990 German Airbus repaid 440 million DM of this loan. In December of last year the Dasa transferred another 1.4 billion DM to Bonn. All in all Germany received 1.88 DM, which corresponds to an interest rate of 40.29 per cent. By this, Theo Waigel, the Minister of Finance, was able to fulfil the Maastricht deficit criterion. During the Innovations Congress of his party at the end of January, Chancellor Helmut Kohl demanded that Germany should not come to a standstill. Hopefully the "Minister of the Future" was listening. From page 4 of FLUG REVUE 3/98 Home | Update | LATEST ISSUE | Gallery | FR Profile | Datafiles | FR 3/98 Copyright 1998 by Motor-Presse Stuttgart. All rights reserved. Last updated February 5, 1998 FLUG REVUE, Ubierstr. 83, 53173 Bonn, Germany