Orders placed with companies in the German manufacturing sector rose by 4.9% on a 12-month basis in April, the Economy Ministry calculated on June 7.
However, the figure did not include manufacturing orders data from the key state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany's industrial heartland, owing to a public-sector strike there in preceding months, the ministry said in a statement.
The heavily industrialized sate of North Rhine-Westphalia comprises 20% of the overall manufacturing orders for the whole country, making it difficult to interpret the headline data, the ministry noted.
Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2006
