Wiesbaden (dpa/lhe) – The Hessian handicraft businesses are skeptical about the business development in autumn. 70 percent of the companies expected the business situation to remain the same, 22 percent to deteriorate and only eight percent to improve in the third quarter, said the President of the Working Group of the Hessian Chambers of Crafts, Susanne Haus, on Friday in Wiesbaden.
Overall, the business expectations are more pessimistic than in the same period of the previous year, the President reported. The abolition of the state corona pandemic requirements made the companies’ expectations of a further upturn in their business situation positive in the last quarter. However, the burdens of the Ukraine war and the drastic price increases would gradually show their effects.
In the economic survey of companies in the state, 89 percent of the companies reported that their purchase prices had increased in the course of the second quarter. The working group of the Hessian chambers of crafts announced that 60 percent of the companies stated that they had increased their sales prices.
Around 85 percent of the nearly 77,000 craft businesses currently describe their business situation as good or at least satisfactory. The construction and finishing trades as well as commercial needs companies remain primarily responsible for the still robust situation in the skilled trades, as they are still in a good business situation with high capacity utilisation.
