display

Hamburg (dpa / lno) - After the catastrophic Corona year 2020 for many companies, Hamburg's economy is tentatively, but still reasonably optimistic, looking to the future.

"Corona will pass," said the president of the AGA business association, Hans Fabian Kruse, on Monday evening at the online start of the year for the Übersee Club.

"Let's build the future on our strengths."

Top representatives from the port sector, retail trade, tourism, craft, the media, industry and the financial sector made similar statements - after almost all of them apologized for their partly completely wrong forecasts at the beginning of last year.

For example, the President of the Port of Hamburg Association of Companies, Gunther Bonz, had predicted a handling of almost nine million standard containers (TEU) in 2020.

In fact, because of the corona pandemic, it was almost 8.5 million TEU.

This year he now expects a slight increase of less than one percent and a total throughput of 140 million tons and 8.7 million TEU in the port.

"My forecasts for the retail sector have never been as wrong as last year and they have never been as uncertain as at the beginning of this year," said the President of the North Retail Association, Andreas Bartmann.

While the grocery and online trade are doing brilliant business, the shoe and textile industries, for example, are worried about their existence.

"Nationwide we expect a loss of over 15,000 stores this year, for Hamburg that means around 1,300 stores that will not survive the Corona crisis."

display

The managing director of Hamburg Tourismus GmbH, Michael Otremba, who had predicted a record year for 2020 - and now assumes that recovery from the lockdown will take years, was similarly wrong in his forecast for the previous year.

It will be a marathon, but unlike the real marathon, it is not clear whether it will actually end after 42 kilometers.

Both the Chamber of Crafts President Hjalmar Stemmann and the Chairman of the Hamburg Industry Association, Matthias Boxberger, were relatively confident about their industries.

The board spokesman of Hamburger Sparkasse AG, Harald Vogelsang, promised even better prospects for the financial sector.

2020 was already a golden year for risk-ready investors.

The DAX, for example, ended the year with a plus of 3.5 percent despite Corona.

"2021 will be another upswing year for shareholders."

He considers a DAX with 15,000 points to be quite conceivable.

"The current share prices are a much better indicator of the future prospects of all of us than the number of vaccine doses currently," said Vogelsang.