Global engineering sales will increase 5 percent in real terms in 2014 - five times as much as this year - as the Chinese market revives, the head of Germany's VDMA industry association said on Monday. "That might sound euphoric but it's not unusual in a cyclical sector like engineering where we have had below-average demand for years," Reinhold Festge, the VDMA's new president, said at a news conference in Frankfurt.
But Festge cautioned that 2013 would be more disappointing than expected, with the sector growing slightly less than 1 percent world-wide due to the subdued economic environment. Demand picked up in Germany in August, with engineering orders rising by 6 percent from the previous year thanks to unusually strong business with euro zone partners. The VDMA represents over 3,000 mainly small and medium-sized companies but also large companies such as MAN SE and ThyssenKrupp.
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