German exports rose by 1.9 per cent month on month in April, federal statisticians said Monday, according to dpa. The country's overall business production also rose, by 0.9 per cent, provisional new data from the Federal Statistics Office showed. Germany exported goods with a value of 100.4 billion euros (111.5 billion dollars), whereas its imports cost 78.3 billion euros in April. The imports were down by 1.3 per cent. That gave the Germans a foreign trade surplus of 22.1 billion euros. Germany's export industries have suffered a spell of poor growth in recent months, but the new data, along with robust order data announced last week, indicates a recovery, helped by the current weak euro exchange rate and cheap world oil prices. The statisticians also revised their calculation of the decline in production for March, posting a minus of 0.4 per cent rather than 0.5. In the detail, the data showed factories staged an output increase of 0.7 per cent in April, but the overall production figure was lifted higher by a surge in construction, up 1.3 per cent month on month.
