German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier expects the German economy to grow by about 2% this year, predicting a difference of 0.1 percentage point.

“We could also have a 3% growth”, said Peter Altmaier, but added that companies are not investing enough to achieve higher growth because they lack a sufficient workforce to increase production.

Earlier this month, the Ifo economic institute increased its growth forecast for German gross domestic product in 2018 to 1.9% from 1.8% previously. The reason was the better-than-expected performance of the economy in the first half of the year.

Also last week it became clear that the attitudes of German analysts and investors on the prospects for a leading European economy in the coming months improved in September for the second consecutive month, according to a recent study by the European Economic Research Center Zew.

The index of the Munich-based research institute, which is measuring Germany’s economic outlook for the next six months, rose by 3.1 points to -10.6 points in September, while the average financial market expectations were a much modest improvement to – 13.5 points.