German exports experienced their strongest growth in three years, surging a seasonally adjusted 7 per cent in June compared to May's data, the country's statistics office said Friday, according to dpa. The latest figures, following a gradual increase over the last two months, add to signs that the global recession is starting to loosen its grip on Europe's biggest economy. The export figures eclipsed analyst predictions of a 1.8-per-cent gain, after a more modest 0.3 per-cent rise in May. Meanwhile, German industrial production levelled off in June after a bumper increase the previous month, according to figures released the same day. Seasonally adjusted results for June showed a drop of 0.1 per cent over the previous month, when industrial production had experienced a 4.3-per-cent surge, according to Ministry of Economics and Technology data. "We should be at the end of the trough," said the president of the BGA foreign trade federation, Anton Boerner. Economists at Commerzbank were also optimistic that the recession appeared to be over. As the world's leading export nation, Germany had born the brunt of the economic crisis, but could now enjoy a speedy recovery from the slump, on the back of a sustained upswing in global trade, the bank's analysts said. However, some experts warned against reading too much into the export figures, which represent the biggest rise since September 2006. "We should first wait another two to three months," one statistician said. While the signs were encouraging, exports are still far below 2008 figures. The overall balance of trade was 12.2 billion euros (17.5 billion dollars) for the month of June. This compares to 20.1 billion dollars in June 2008. June's exports remained 22.3 per cent lower than the previous year's figures, yet this was an improvement over May's year-on-year drop of 24.6 per cent. Latest figures also showed that company bankruptcies jumped sharply in May, when 2,663 insolvencies were reported. That figure was almost 15 per cent higher than the previous month, and double the increase from March to April. By May, 65,191 company and private insolvencies had been registered since the start of the year. Key forward-looking economic sentiment indicators have suggested that the slowdown in the German economy is starting to bottom out, as business confidence in the nation rose for the fourth consecutive month in July. Underscoring the optimism about the outlook for the nation's economy, the Economics Ministry said Thursday that key German factory orders surged in June by 4.5 per cent to record their fourth monthly gain. Economists had only predicted a 0.7 per cent rise. The sharp rise in June factory orders came in the wake of a 4.3- per-cent increase in May. Driving the rise in June was a solid 8.3-per-cent jump in total foreign industrial orders, in particular from Germany's partners in the 16-member eurozone. Industrial orders from the eurozone soared by 13.2 per cent in June, the economics ministry said. But underscoring the fragile state of the German economy, total domestic orders edged up by just 0.2 per cent in June. Moreover, after a sharp contraction in economic growth in the first three months of the year as the global recession took hold, analysts expect the German economy to shrink dramatically, by more than 6 per cent this year.
