Berlin - German exports posted their first rise for six months in March, according to data released Friday - fuelling hopes that the recession in Europe's biggest economy may have started to bottom out.

The Federal Statistics Office said exports, adjusted for seasonal swings, edged up by 0.7 per cent to 66.4 billion euros (88.46 billion dollars), with imports rising 0.8 percent to 57.6 billion euros.

Analysts had expected the world's leading export nation would report about a 2-per-cent fall in both exports and imports.

"Today's numbers give some hope that the free fall of the economy has been stopped and that the second quarter will be much better," said ING Bank economist Carsten Brzeski.

The March increase in imports represented the first monthly rise since September, when a deepening crisis in the US banking sector plunged the world economy into recession.

The nation's trade surplus shrank slightly to 8.8 billion euros in March, from 8.9 billion euros in February.

The release of the latest German trade data came in the wake of figures showing a string rise in foreign orders helping to boost the nations key factory orders by a surprise
3.3 per cent in March, the first increase in seven months.

The order book and export data followed a string of key economic sentiment surveys that have pointed to German economic growth starting to regain traction by the end of the year on the back of hefty interest rate cuts and the government's stimulus packages.

However, after an unexpectedly weak first-quarter the German economy is tipped to shrink by a dramatic 6 per cent this year before gradually starting to recover during
2010.

Indeed, while German imports were down 11.6 per cent in March compared with the same month last year, March exports dropped by 15.8 per cent year on year.