German exports surpass 1 trillion euros for 1st time in 2011

Europe's biggest economy exported 1.06 trillion euros (US$1.4 trillion) in the whole of last year, exceeding the one-trillion mark for the first time, the national statistics office Destatis said in a statement.

Imports also rose to a record 902 billion euros.

Exports declined by 4.3 percent in December alone to their lowest level since April, as the effects of the region's debilitating debt crisis increasingly made themselves felt, the data showed.

And with imports also falling by 3.9 percent, Germany's trade surplus — which had ballooned to 158.1 billion euros throughout the whole of 2011 — contracted to 13.9 billion euros in December.

The full-year data place Germany as the world's number two exporter behind China which posted exports worth a total 1.432 billion euros and a trade surplus of 117 billion euros in 2011.

China, along with the eurozone's second-biggest economy, France, are Germany's main trading partners.

But France posted a trade deficit of almost 70 billion euros in 2011. France has a structural trade deficit and is increasingly looking to the German model as a guide to raising competitiveness and exports.

On a 12-month basis, German exports to fellow eurozone countries — which buy around 40 percent of all German exports — declined by 3.3 percent in December, while exports to countries outside the single currency area jumped by 14.7 percent.

“It was a bad December through and through,” said Commerzbank economist Ulrike Rondorf.

“Following the plunge in industrial production, the steep fall in exports is the second poor German data release for December,” she said.

Economy ministry data on Tuesday showed German industrial production dropping by a bigger-than-expected 2.9 percent month-on-month in December after stagnating in November.

On one hand, the trade data probably reflected feeble demand, particularly in the eurozone, Rondorf said.

On the other, it could be partially attributable to calendar effects, the economist suggested.

“We expect the German economy to have contracted by 0.3 percent in the final quarter of 2011 compared with the third quarter,” she said.

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