One bad news is currently chasing the other: amid reports of record inflation and skyrocketing prices for energy and fuel, we could soon be threatened with empty supermarket shelves. The head of the German truck and long-distance driver association BGL (800,000 truck drivers) is now warning of this.
Due to the ever-increasing prices for petrol and diesel, more and more logistics service providers are stumbling, dramatic bottlenecks in food could be the result, as Prof. Dirk Engelhard (48) warns of the German “Bild”: “The worst supply crisis since 70 is imminent years. That means partly empty supermarket shelves.”
In fact, more and more freight forwarders can no longer afford the costs of their day-to-day business in view of the exploding fuel prices. The first companies are already being forced to abandon their trucks, according to Engelhardt, who says he has asked four times for help from the German Green Economics Minister Robert Habeck (52), but has not yet received a response.
But it’s not just the truck drivers in the country who are groaning under the fuel prices. Water transport is also becoming increasingly difficult due to skyrocketing fuel prices: As the operator of a trawl cutter, Holger Müller (41) from Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, explains, it is “impossible to work economically at these prices”. His cutter consumes 30 liters of diesel per hour.
“We leave the cutter in port because it just isn’t worth it. I have to feed my family and pay an employee. If nothing changes, I’ll give up fishing. First Corona and now this,” the cutter operator complains to the “Bild”.
And the worries don’t stop with trucks and cutters: the explosion in energy prices is also hitting the chemical industry hard, where energy sometimes accounts for a fifth of all costs.
The head of the German Economic Institute (IW), Michael Hüther (59), warns of the economic crash: “We already have partial production standstills due to high energy prices. Economically, we are already in a recessionary movement.” In the worst case, Klaus-Jürgen Gern from the Kiel Institute IfW even thinks that the economy could shrink by 2 percent.
