By Maria Martinez
(Reuters) -German industrial orders unexpectedly rose in April thanks to strong domestic demand, the federal statistics office said on Thursday.
Orders rose by 0.6% on the previous month on a seasonally and calendar-adjusted basis. A Reuters poll of analysts had pointed to a fall of 1.0%.
The less volatile three-month on three-month comparison showed that new orders in the period from February to April were 0.5% higher than in the previous three months.
The statistics office also revised the data for March to a 3.4% increase on the month, instead of the previous 3.6%.
Foreign orders fell by 0.3% on the month, with new orders from the euro zone increasing by 0.5% and new orders from outside the euro zone declining by 0.9%. Domestic orders rose by 2.2% on the month, the statistics office said.
(Reporting by Tristan Veyet in Gdansk and Maria Martinez in BerlinEditing by Ludwig Burger)
