No-growth economy in '81 forecast for W. Germany

West Germany's five leading economic research institutes forecast zero growth for the national economy in 1981. The institutes predicted that after recession in the first half of the year, with a 1 percent drop in gross national product, the economy would recover in the second half with 1.5 percent growth. The overall result for the year would be the poorest since the 1975 recession, after the start of the oil crisis, when West Germany's GNP shrank 1.8 percent. The institutes linked their forecast with "great uncertainty" over the price of oil imports and expectations that world trade as a whole would continue to decline until about midyear.