German exports plunge in March

Exports from Germany plunged by 11.8 percent in March, their worst month-on-month fall since the country's 1990 reunification, statistics authority Destatis said Friday.

The data illustrated the first monthly impact of the coronavirus epidemic on Europe's biggest economy. The drop was far steeper than a five percent forecast from analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.

Some 108.9 billion euros ($118 billion) of German goods were sold abroad, while the country bought imports worth 91.6 billion euros - down by 5.1 percent from the level in February.

The bigger plunge in exports than imports reduced Germany's widely-criticised trade surplus to 17.4 billion euros, compared with 22.3 billion a year before. In Germany, late March brought the first shutdowns of much of public life to limit the spread of the coronavirus.