German Manufacturing Orders Up 1%

Orders placed with companies in the German manufacturing sector rose by 1% in the first three months of the current year, compared with the preceding three months, the economy ministry calculated on May 8.

First-quarter growth in manufacturing orders was therefore slower than in the last three months of 2005 when orders were up by 3.3%, the ministry said.

The ministry usually publishes monthly manufacturing orders data. But owing to a public-sector strike in the key state of North Rhine-Westphalia, data for that particular state in the months of February and March were not collated. And since the heavily industrialized sate of North Rhine-Westphalia carries a weighting of 20% in the overall manufacturing orders for the whole country, it was not possible to calculate meaningful data for the individual months of February and March, the ministry explained.