Germany refuses to grant Intel’s additional demand for chip factory

German Finance Minister Christian Lindner rejected Intel’s demands to increase support for a new chip factory in eastern Germany, with an investment cost of about $18 billion, noting that his country could not afford this.

The U.S. chipmaker was scheduled to receive €6.8 billion in backing from the government for its plant, but higher energy and construction costs made Intel demand 10 billion euros to compensate for the rising expenses.

“There is no more money available in the budget,” the Financial Times quoted Lindner as saying in an interview on Sunday. “We are trying to consolidate the budget right now, not expand it.”

In November, Germany’s inflation stood at around 11.3 percent, running at its fastest pace since the early 1950s as Europe’s largest economy has seen painful backfires from Western sanctions on Russia.