German exports plunge 20.7 percent in January

BERLIN, March 10 (Chinese media) -- German exports plunged 20.7 percent in January year-on-year, the biggest drop in 16 years, the Federal Statistics Office (Destatis) said Tuesday.

It was the fourth straight monthly decline since October, pushing the German economy deeper into recession.

January's imports fell 12.9 percent from a year ago, according to the statistics office.

The trade surplus of Germany, the largest economy in the European Union, was halved to 8.3 billion euros (10.5 billion U.S. dollars) in January compared with 17.3 billion euros (21.9 billion dollars) in January 2008, Destatis said.

"The global recession is showing its full impact on German export markets,"and "we can't even see the end of it," Bloomberg quoted Thorsten Polleit, chief German economist at Barclays Capital in Frankfurt, as saying.