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BERLIN: The global economic slump has already hit the European auto, chemical and transport sectors, and it looks like the list will soon get longer.
Problems in the key auto sector, the first to be slammed by the crisis as sales plummeted, have rippled out to parts suppliers and then on to the chemical and steel industries.
Last week, German chemical giant BASF said it would temporarily shut down 80 plants, affecting 20,000 staff worldwide, and rival Rhodia announced it would cut back production at three French sites by 40 percent.
Others will likely do the same after the European Chemical Industry Council forecast a general reduction in output next year, excluding pharmaceutical products.
As for steel producers, the combined effects of lower prices and a sharp drop in demand led analysts at US investment bank JP Morgan to write: "We expect European steel industry earnings to drop by 43 percent in 2009."
In Belgium, the steel company Umicore said "the rapid deterioration of the global car market and announced production cuts at various auto makers" would make it miss its 2008 profit target.
"Each sector is feeling the slowdown because all areas of the economy are linked to each other," Commerzbank analyst Joerg Kraemer said.
The construction sector is slumping across the continent and "it would be hazardous to forecast a noticeable improvement ... before the end of the decade," according to a recent study by credit insurance group Euler Hermes, a unit of Germany's Allianz.
The crisis looks like it will hit the services sector too.
Advertising companies are directly affected by the auto sector slowdown because car makers are often among their biggest clients.
In Germany, which has fallen into its first recession in five years, car makers have cut advertising budgets by around 10 percent this year, according to the advertising federation ZAW, which sees a flat market overall in 2009.
In France, outdoor advertising group JCDecaux has lowered its forecast for sales growth in 2008.
The global luxury goods market will also hit a trough in 2009 for the first time in six years, according to the advisory group Bain and Company.
In Europe, the leading luxury market, growth is expected to slow by half this year to 5.0 percent.
Owing to falling demand, air transport saw a drop in the number of passengers in September for the first time in five years and the sharpest drop in freight in seven years.
Forecasts for 2009 are not optimistic either.
The biggest European airline, Air France-KLM, has remained cagey about its outlook for 2008/2009 while German carrier Lufthansa lowered its target for this year at the end of October.
Given the 15-nation eurozone's first-ever recession, businesses are trimming their travel budgets and households are doing the same.
In the rail sector, Eurostar trains have been affected by the crisis since its Paris-London service is "in the heart of a major business traffic route and therefore affected by the economy", said Mireille Faugere, director of long-distance services at the French railway SNCF.
When exports slump, freight services quickly feel the effects.
In the northern port of Hamburg, the biggest in Germany and number two in Europe, "the container trade is slowing quickly, declining by four percent in the third quarter" of 2008, a study by the Swiss bank UBS said.
"If this trend continues, volumes will decline in 2009 for the first time since 1982," it noted.
- AFP/so
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