FRANKFURT, Oct 7, 2008 (AFP) - Signs multiplied on Tuesday that the financial crisis is biting in Germany with firms having difficulty in obtaining credit from banks and carmaker Opel suspending production.

This week has seen Chancellor Angela Merkel's government arrange a 50-billion-euro (68-billion-dollar) rescue of Hypo Real Estate (HRE) and stave off any run on banks with a blanket guarantee for all private accounts.

But as Merkel prepared to address parliament at 5:10 pm (1510 GMT) there was growing evidence that the pain was also being felt outside the banking sector in Europe's biggest economy and the world's number one exporter.

For example Opel, a unit of General Motors, the world's biggest automaker, said on Tuesday that it was suspending production at two German factories because of the crisis.

Production lines at its factory at Bochum ground to a halt eight days ago and now its 5,000 workers have been temporarily laid off, while at Eisenach starting on Monday no more cars will be made for three weeks, the firm said.

According to a report in the Bild daily, Opel wants to lower production by 40,000 vehicles by the end of the year and also wants to halt output at sites in Spain and Britain, where it operates under the Vauxhall brand.

'It makes no sense to produce cars that will find no market because of the impact of the financial crisis on our customers,' a spokesman for Opel said.

Other German carmakers are also starting to feel the pinch, with Daimler hit by rumours that it might issue a profit warning amid falling Mercedes sales.

In further hits to the luxury car market, Porsche is preparing to suspend production while BMW has abandoned its earnings targets for 2008 and is not expecting any improvement until 2010.

Other sectors are also being affected, with software giant SAP warning late Monday that recent market developments had been 'dramatic and worrying to many businesses.'

This lack of readiness of firms to invest in new software had triggered a 'very sudden and unexpected drop in business activity,' SAP warned.

The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers last month and the subsequent bailouts and nationalisation of banks and insurers both sides of the Atlantic has made banks extremely wary of lending each other money on money markets.

And according to the head of Germany's powerful BDI industry federation, the resulting drying up of credit is making banks less and less willing to lend money to companies.

'It is getting harder and more expensive for companies to obtain credit,' BDI Werner Schnappauf told the Financial Times Deutschland in an interview.

This in turn could force companies to mothball plans to invest money in launching new products or opening new factories.