Germany will set another export record this year despite recent worries of an economic slowdown in China, the head of the German trade association said in an interview published yesterday.

Economists have expressed concern that China’s woes might become a burden for Germany’s export-centric economy, Europe’s largest, which has the greatest exposure to China of all 28 EU member states.

China is currently the Germany’s fourth biggest export market, accounting for 6.6 per cent of its exports.

Anton Boerner, head of the BGA trade association, told the newspaper Der Tagesspiegel that he still expected Ger-man companies to trump last year’s record trade performance.

“We’ll manage to post a small plus,” Boerner said, adding that China’s impact on Germany should not be overestimated, and that he was more worried about the risk of a break-up of the eurozone.

“There was an incredible growth phase over several decades [in China]. So it’s only natural if there is a setback now,” Boerner said, adding that German exports to China might grow at a slower pace, but they would not decline.

In total, Germany exported €1.13 trillion worth of goods and services in 2014, a 3.7 per cent increase on 2013, despite sluggish global growth and the sanctions imposed on Russia over the Ukraine crisis.

China fears have been overblown and financial markets have overreacted to the recent disruption

However, weaker demand from abroad was reflected in a sharper-than-expected drop in industrial orders in July.

Fresh data is expected today when industrial output figures for July are issued, with analysts predicting a one per cent rise. Tomorrow sees the release of trade figures for July, which will give another clue to how the German economy started into the third quarter.

Meanwhile, even the CEO of German carmaker Daimler is insisting that China fears have been overblown and financial markets have overreacted to the recent economic disruption in China.

The chief executive of Daimler said in a newspaper interview yesterday that though growth in the Chinese economy and automobile market is slowing, Daimler still sold 53 per cent more Mercedes models in August than it did in the same month last year and the company is targeting record sales of 300,000-plus vehicles in 2015, Dieter Zetsche told Bild am Sonntag.

“It’s not a crisis; the financial market reaction and all these gloomy forecasts are overdone,” Zetsche said. He also expects growth in the global car market.

“We had to run all our factories through-out the summer and even had to bring in 8,000 holiday workers in Germany,” Zetsche said.