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Continuation: The Economy
Manufacturing industry in the city is going through a fundamental structural change. From 1991 to 1998, Berlin lost about 140,000 industrial jobs. The future of manufacturing industry lies in the modernisation of traditional industries such as electronics, vehicle construction, chemicals, pharmacy and machine engineering and, by association, the establishment and extension of new growth industries in the intelligent technology sector. Retail trade can also hope for higher turnover. The crafts sector is proving to be a stabilising force in the economic structure of the city. Berlin has over 19,000 crafts companies with 214,000 employees (1999). There are also about 9,000 companies in craft-type industries, employing about 24,000 people. Compared with the number of employees, the crafts sector provides an above average number of apprenticeships. In 1998 about 23,000 young apprentices were trained; the retail trade and industry trained about 28,000 young people.
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There
are also good prospects for financial service companies, banks
and insurance companies. Berlin is a major regional banking centre
and number four among German financial locations today. In 1998,
21 banks had their main headquarters in the city. At the same
time, banks with their headquarters elsewhere maintained 113 branches
in Berlin. The Berlin securities market achieved its best operating
result to date in 1998. And up to October of this year, the turnover
of 294 billion DM was 28 per cent above the volume for the previous
year. In recent years, the Berlin stock market has become the
leading specialised market for Eastern European securities.
