German car exports up by nearly half in May

An industry group says German car exports saw another strong year-on-year rise in May _ increasing by nearly half as global demand recovers.

The VDA group said Wednesday that Germany exported 367,700 cars last month _ an increase of 46 percent compared with May 2009. That followed a 58 percent rise in April.

Sales in Germany itself have been slipping in year-on-year terms for months after a popular government car-scrapping program expired.

That trend continued in May. Some 252,800 new cars were registered in Germany _ 34 percent fewer than a year earlier. They were down nearly 32 percent in April.

VDA said the healthy export performance helped push up production _ which rose 10 percent on the year to 470,100.