By Maria Martinez
BERLIN, Dec 5 (Reuters) - German industrial orders rose more than expected in October, data showed on Friday, though the increase was driven by large-scale orders and economists said there were no signs of a broader upturn.
Orders rose by 1.5% on the previous month on a seasonally and calendar adjusted basis, the federal statistics office said. A Reuters poll of analysts had pointed to a rise of 0.4%.
The figure was boosted by an 87.1% month-on-month increase under the "other transport
equipment" category - which includes aircraft, ships, trains and military vehicles.
DOMESTIC ORDERS GAIN PACE
LBBW economist Jens-Oliver Niklasch pointed to a 9.9% increase in domestic orders from the previous month which he said could have been partly driven by government incentives to revive the economy following two years of contraction.
"The German government's 'investment booster' programme may be having an effect here," he said, referring to a package of measures approved in June including better depreciation options for companies to incentivise investment.
Niklasch said the domestic rise could also be down to rearmament orders, following an increase in defence spending.
In March, Germany's parliament approved plans for a massive spending surge, including a 500-billion euro ($582.60 billion) special fund for infrastructure and plans to largely remove defence investment from the rules that cap borrowing.
SEPTEMBER DATA REVISED UPWARD
Excluding big-ticket items, overall new orders were up just 0.5% compared with the previous month, the data showed on Friday.
Foreign orders were down 4.0% compared with the previous month.
The less-volatile three-month on three-month comparison showed that overall new orders in the period from August to October were 0.5% lower than in the previous three months.
After revision of the provisional data, new orders in September increased by 2.0% on August, instead of the preliminary figure of 1.1%.
The revision means that the core indicator for orders continued to move sideways, Ralph Solveen, senior economist at Commerzbank, said.
"This suggests that the industry has stabilized, but there are still no signs of an upturn."
($1 = 0.8582 euros)
(Additional reporting by Simon Ferdinand Eibach, Editing by Miranda Murray and Andrew Heavens)
