The massive 11.8-per-cent contraction in Germany’s March exports followed a slew of data underscoring the crisis’ impact on a nation with industry in freefall, economic confidence evaporating, unemployment surging and private consumption nosediving.

The president of Germany’s chamber of commerce and industry (DIHK) Eric Schweitzer warned on Friday that a return to normality was still not in sight, saying “the way out of the crisis remains bumpy and the pandemic crisis will leave deep marks on balance sheets.”

Releasing Friday’s trade data, the Federal Statistics Office (Destatis) said the March export drop was the biggest since the nation’s historic unification in 1990, when records started.

Indeed, the scale and speed of the economic decline serves to underscore the dangerous phase that Germany has entered as it attempts to contain the economic downturn by easing restrictions, but without jeopardizing the success it has seen so far in containing the virus.

The number of registered coronavirus cases in Germany surged this week, to more than 166,000 according to Berlin’s Robert Koch Institute. About 140,000 having recovered from the illness and 7,160 having died.

The economic crisis triggered by the pandemic during the last six weeks came after a promising start to the year for the German economy, with signs that the nation’s manufacturing sector was rebounding from the long-running US-China trade war.

But economists have warned that the April data might be even more startling. German stay-at-home orders and the shutdown of large tracts of the nation’s industry to halt the spread of Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, were only imposed in the middle of March.

“The Covid-19 crisis is still the mother of all fast-moving environments,” said ING Bank chief eurozone economist Carsten Brzeski.

The German government expects the nation’s economy to contract by 6.3 per cent this year.

Friday’s trade data also formed part of Destatis’ release this week of the first set of key German economic data for March.

While both monthly factory orders and industrial production contracted at record rates, output in the nation’s car sector – a major pillar of jobs and the nation’s export machine – dropped by 31.1 per cent.

The week’s data also highlighted the fallout for global trade of the coronavirus crisis, with first quarter German exports to its main trading partners in the 19-member eurozone dropping by 5.9 per cent compared with the same period last year.

March foreign orders were down 16.1 per cent, while imports also fell a more-than-forecast 5.1 per cent, Destatis said.

The data also followed a steady stream of leading business sentiment surveys that have pointed to a disastrous slump in the economy this year.

German business confidence dropped to a record low last month, while the Nuremberg-based GfK research group said consumer confidence in the nation was “in freefall,” as job and economic fears unleashed by the pandemic hit the nation’s households.

“Sentiment among German companies is catastrophic,” said Clemens Fuest, who heads up the Munich-based Ifo economic institute.

“Companies have never been so pessimistic about the coming months,” he said.

After months of record lows, German unemployment climbed to 5.8 per cent in April, from 5.1 per cent in March.

On top of the April rise, the Federal Labour Agency said about 750,000 companies applied to place 10.1 million workers on a government-financed reduced hours work programme.

Based on a similar scheme established during the global financial crisis a year ago, the scheme allows employers to furlough workers or cut their hours, but with the government paying about two-thirds of their salary.