Medical technology conveys the image of being a perfectly healthy sector which is not letting itself be infected even by a severely ailing economic climate. An extrapolation by Spectaris, the German industry association for optical, medical and mechatronic technologies, suggests that the fall in sales for 2009 will ultimately amount to no more than three percent. Business focused on health has thus proved to be crisis-resistant, since the average German industrial sector has been confronted with a decline in excess of 20 percent. Added to this comes the fact that medical technology was able to record an increase in sales for many years running. The current decline is attributed to a reduction in export figures, which, given an export rate of some 65 percent, has had a correspondingly marked impact on the result as a whole. Domestic demand, by contrast, has remained stable and, following a weaker first half, slight growth is even expected here.

Gerhard Gotzmann