Germany doubles arms exports in 2015

BERLIN — Germany doubled its arms exports last year to around 8 billion euros ($8.9 billion), government figures showed on Friday, in contradiction to Berlin's pledge to rein in the amount of weapons Europe's biggest economy sells abroad. 

The increase was driven largely by "special factors", Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel explained when presenting the data.

The economy ministry is in charge of approving arms exports and Gabriel had promised to limit them when he took up his position at the end of 2013. 

In particular, Berlin wanted to curb exports of light weapons and track them closely once they had left the country. 

Gabrial cited big-ticket contracts for tanker airplanes to Britain and guided missiles to South Korea among the "special factors". 

The volume of exports was also inflated by a delivery of Leopard 2 tanks to Qatar, a contract approved by the previous government in 2013, the minister explained. 

If it had been up to him, "I would not have approved them," he insisted. 

Before Gabriel's Social Democrat SPD Party agreed to share power with Angela Merkel's conservative CDU Party, the CDU had been in a coalition with the liberal FDP. 

Gabriel accused the previous administration of "not applying the rules as they should have been applied". 

Overall, Gabriel insisted the government was making progress in achieving its declared goals and in 2014, the exports of light weapons had dropped sharply. 

Detailed arms exports figures for 2015 are to be released in June. 

Official data also showed that Germany clocked up its highest-ever trade surplus in 2015 as both exports and imports powered ahead to new records.

German exports jumped by 6.4 per cent to 1.196 trillion euros ($1.3 trillion) in the whole of 2015 and imports advanced by 4.2 per cent to 948 billion euros, the federal statistics office calculated.

That meant that the trade surplus, the balance between exports and imports, grew to 247.8 billion euros, its highest-ever level, from 213.6 billion euros a year earlier, the statisticians indicated. 

The trade surplus is a key gauge of an economy's comparative strength and underlines the robustness of Europe's biggest economy amid the current global economic uncertainties.

German-made goods were in strong demand all over the world last year, with exports to the European Union (EU) rising 7 per cent and exports to other countries rising 5.6 per cent, Destatis pointed out.

Within the EU, exports to the eurozone climbed by 5.9 per cent, while exports to European countries outside the single currency area grew by 8.9 per cent.

In December alone, however, both exports and imports declined by 1.6 per cent in calendar- and seasonally-adjusted terms, meaning that the trade surplus contracted slightly to 19.4 billion euros, Destatis said.

Separately, German businesses are expecting to see a further drop in exports to Russia this year to their lowest level in 10 years, even if companies continue to regard it as a market with enormous potential, a specialist trade organisation found on Friday.

German exports to Russia plummeted by 25.5 per cent last year, weighed down by the plunging ruble and the economic crisis in Russia, according to data published by the Committee on Eastern European Economic Relations. 

"Compared with the record year in 2012, German exports to Russia have fallen by nearly half in the past three years from 38 billion euros [$42 billion] to 21 billion euros," indicated Wolfgang Buechele, who heads the committee and is chief executive of industrial gases group Linde.

"And according to our estimates, exports will drop by around 10 per cent this year and fall below the 20-billion-euro mark for the first time since 2006," Buechele said.

"At the moment, Germany's foreign trade is booming, helping to offset" the difficulties in Russia, said Rainer Seele, president of the German-Russian chamber of commerce and head of the Austrian oil and gas group, OMV. 

But that might not always be the case, as the outlook for a number of emerging economies clouds over, he warned. 

German businesses have been highly critical with regard to the economic sanctions slapped on Russia by the EU. But they believe the wind will change and the outlook for the country will brighten this year. 

"Our Russian partners insist that cooperation with Europe has a different quality and reliability than with other partners," Seele added. 

Buechele and Seele were part of a delegation of German business leaders who met Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference this month.

At that conference, Medvedev said tensions between Russia and the West had sent the world into a "new Cold War". 

But the fact that Medvedev attended the Munich conference alone was a good sign, Buechele suggested, saying Russia was "holding out a hand" to Europe. 

"Everywhere in Russia, we seeing and hearing the same signal: we're re-opening ourselves again to Europe, to cooperation with German companies in particular," said Seele. 

"The German economy is ready and continues to see enormous potential" in Russia, he added.