Private consumption drove German growth of 1.5% in 2014

Berlin

PRIVATE consumption and trade fuelled a 1.5 per cent expansion of the German economy in 2014, its best performance in three years but a result which masked weakness in the final three quarters of the year.

"The German economy turned out to be strong in a difficult global economic environment, benefiting especially from a strong domestic demand," Roderich Egeler, president of the statistics office said at a press conference in Berlin on Thursday.

Private consumption added 0.6 percentage points to growth last year, preliminary data from the Federal Statistics Office showed. Record high employment, rising wages and moderate inflation a…