(Reuters) -German industrial orders in January fell by 7% from the previous month, the federal statistics office said on Friday, as the previous month’s upswing from bulky purchasing petered out.
A Reuters poll of analysts had pointed to a fall of 2.8%.
December orders had risen significantly more than expected on a burst of demand for aircraft, ships, trains and military vehicles.
“This looks rather like a volatile sideways movement at a low level, and domestic demand is weaker than overseas demand,” said Jens-Oliver Niklasch, economist at lender LBBW.
The parties hoping to form Germany’s next government this week agreed to overhaul state borrowing rules to boost defence spending and have earmarked 500 billion euros ($541 billion) for infrastructure investments over 10 years.
($1 = 0.9234 euros)
(Reporting by Tristan Veyet in Gdanskand Ludwig Burger in FrankfurtEditing by David Goodman)
