German Factory Orders Rise Again

After two months of decline, factory orders in Germany in March have exceeded expectations. Orders rose 2.2 percent from February, when they declined 2 percent, the Economy and Labor Ministry in Berlin said today, according to Bloomberg news service. Experts had expected orders only to rise 0.1 percent, the median of 40 forecasts in a Bloomberg survey showed. But analysts were cautious about the country's economic outlook in the longer term. "Against the background of consistently falling business sentiment, this is likely to have been a one-off spike,'' said Simon Hayley, an economist at Capital Economics in London, according to Bloomberg. "The underlying trend remains for German growth to stagnate, and it will take more than a single good quarter to shake this belief."