German business confidence fell in December, reaching its lowest level since May 2020, a survey showed on Tuesday.
The Ifo Institute for Economic Research, a Munich-based think tank, said that Germany's business climate index dropped to 84.7 in December, down from 85.6 the previous month. This marks the sixth decline in the past seven months and the lowest reading in the past four and a half years.
In December, the indexes for manufacturing and trade also saw a notable drop. German businesses surveyed expressed great concern about their current operations and the outlook for the future, according to the institute.
Clemens Fuest, president of the institute, noted that companies surveyed were more pessimistic about the coming months. He believes the ongoing weakness of the German economy has become a long-term trend.
Germany's business climate slips to lowest level since May 2020
Chinese airlines have recorded over 700 million passenger trips so far this year, marking a record high in the history of China's civil aviation development, according to the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC).
As of Sunday, the country's airlines reported a total of 700.48 million passenger trips since the start of the year, CAAC data showed. The total number of the air passenger trips for 2023 was 620 million, according to CAAC figures.
The daily average number of passenger trips has exceeded 2 million, which is 18.1 percent higher than that in the same period last year and 10.7 percent higher than that in 2019, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The robust recovery of the aviation market in 2024 has been largely driven by domestic routes, which logged about 640 million passenger trips, representing a 13-percent increase year on year and a 14-percent increase compared to the same period in 2019, according to the CAAC.
"This year, domestic trunk airports have steadily expanded their backbone network, while feeder airports have also further expanded their basic network as part of their efforts to improve services that rely on local tourism resources. Some regions, such as Xinjiang, Yunnan and Inner Mongolia, have connected themselves to both trunk lines and feeder lines to forge new business forms integrating civil aviation and tourism, leading to the vigorous development of the domestic market," said Zhong Shan, chief economist of the Institute of Air Transport at China Academy of Civil Aviation Science and Technology.
International routes also showed remarkable growth with more than 60 million passenger trips, reflecting a year-on-year surge of over 130 percent and reaching around 88 percent of the pre-pandemic level in 2019, as global travel restrictions eased and demand rebounded, the CAAC noted.
Monthly data have remained at over 90 percent of pre-pandemic levels for five consecutive months since July this year, the administration added.
What worth noting is that air passenger transport reached new heights during travel rushes such as the Spring Festival and summer vacation season, with the daily average number of passenger trips reaching 2.1 million and 2.29 million, respectively.
The single-day peak passenger volume is at 2.45 million this year, an increase of 9.8 percent compared to the highest daily figure last year, according to the CAAC.
China's air passenger transport hits record high in 2024
