FRANKFURT, Nov. 30 -- Material shortages have eased in most of Germany's manufacturing industries, but in the automotive industry the share of companies reporting supply chain problems has increased, the ifo Institute for Economic Research said on Wednesday.

In November, 59.3 percent of the country's manufacturing companies surveyed reported material shortages, the lowest level since April 2021. In October, the respective figure was 63.8 percent, the Munich-based think tank said.

Despite the encouraging signs, it's "too early to say that the situation has fundamentally eased," Klaus Wohlrabe, head of surveys at ifo, commented, adding that "there are still a lot of orders that cannot be processed."

The report also revealed clear differences between industries.

In the automotive industry, the percentage of companies facing shortages rose from 74.9 percent to 83.2 percent.

Meanwhile, the proportion of manufacturers of machinery and equipment affected by the problem dropped 7.8 percentage points from last month to 78.7 percent.

More than 70 percent of Germany's beverage producers and electrical equipment manufacturers surveyed told the ifo Institute that they were still facing material shortages.

In November, under 30 percent of Germany's leather, furniture and basic metal products manufacturers reported supply bottlenecks, according to the report.

A lack of input products from abroad is costing German industry dearly, the German business news magazine WirtschaftsWoche said, citing a recent study conducted by the German Macroeconomic Policy Institute (IMK).

Germany's gross domestic product (GDP) growth could have been 1.2 percent higher in 2021 and 1.5 percent higher in mid-2022 if all new orders were processed, the IMK study said.

"These figures underpin the need to give greater weight to supply chain resilience at the expense of cost efficiency," IMK researchers wrote in the study summary.

  - Xinhua