BERLIN, Nov 5: The German cabinet approved a 23-billion-euro stimulus package on Wednesday to help Europe’s biggest economy and the world’s top exporter avoid the worst effects of a sharp global slowdown before a hoped-for recovery in 2010.

“I believe we are agreed that we must act now ... and send a signal that we will have bad news in 2009 but that we want to do something about it,” Chancellor Angela Merkel said.

“With this we will build a bridge until things get better again in 2010.”

The measures, approved less than three weeks after a 480-billion-euro rescue package for banks, are aimed at stimulating 50 billion euros of investment in 2009 and 2010 with cheap corporate loans, tax breaks and infrastructure projects, the economy ministry said.

“With the package of measures passed today we are making a responsible contribution to securing growth prospects for our country. We are safeguarding investment in our future and therefore in valuable jobs,” Economy Minister Michael Glos said.

Germany, which accounts for a third of eurozone activity, is widely expected to enter a serious slowdown and may already be in a technical recession if, as expected, output is found to have fallen for the second straight quarter in the July to September period.

Last Monday, the widely-watched Ifo indicator showed business confidence dropping in October to its lowest point in more than five years, and the government has slashed its 2009 growth forecast to just 0.2 per cent, the slowest rate of growth since Germany last suffered a recession in 2003.

Merkel has stressed that any measures would be “targeted,” with Berlin highly critical of proposals by French President Nicolas Sarkozy — whose country holds the current EU presidency — for Europe-wide state intervention on a massive scale.

Instead the package, which the government said would cost 23 billion euros, is smaller-scale. It includes 15 billion euros of state-guaranteed loans for cash-strapped firms and eight billion euros worth of infrastructure investment over 2009 and 2010.Berlin also wants to combine the measures with progress on reducing the country’s carbon footprint by hiring construction firms to make public buildings such as schools and hospitals more energy efficient, and through tax incentives on cars, particularly low-emissions models.

This in turn is aimed at giving a helping hand to Germany’s huge but struggling automakers like Volkswagen, Daimler and BMW, who so far have been hit hardest by the global cool-down. Merkel also wants to switch to an emissions-based car tax system.

One casualty of the government’s efforts — coupled with an expected fall in tax revenues because of the slowdown — has been Merkel’s aim to achieve a balanced federal budget in 2011. On Tuesday Merkel said the new aim was to manage this in the next legislative period, which runs to 2013.

Gernot Nerb, chief economist at the Ifo institute, told AFP that many of the measures such as the state-guaranteed loans, making certain assets and costs tax deductible and bringing forward infrastructure investment would help stimulate economic activity.

But other experts say the measures do not go far enough, and the public is also sceptical. An Emnid opinion poll in Bild am Sonntag suggested that 70pc of Germans feel that Merkel’s measures will prove futile.

Firms were also less than impressed, with the free-market MIT association of small and medium sized firms calling the measures “insufficient” and “lacking an overall concept and the necessary punch.”

The package comes a day before the European Central Bank is widely expected to provide further support to the economy by slashing interest rates, a month after the ECB, the US Federal Reserve and five other central banks lowered rates in an exceptional coordinated action to boost financial markets.—AFP