By Jan Strupczewski
BRUSSELS, May 18 (Reuters) - Euro zone export volumes rose for the second month running in March and analysts said Monday's official data could signal the collapse in trade is bottoming out.
The 16 countries using the euro recorded a 400 million euros ($541.7 million) surplus, against deficits of 1 billion euros in February and 2.3 billion in March 2008, unadjusted data from the European Union's statistics office showed.
Adjusted for seasonal swings, the euro zone still had a 2.1 billion euro trade deficit in March, but that gap was smaller than February's 2.9 billion and January's 6.6 billion shortfall.
Seasonally adjusted exports rose to 105 billion in March from 103.5 billion in February and 101.9 billion in January, while imports rebounded to 107 billion in March after easing to 106.4 billion in February from 108.5 billion in January.
"The modestly improving underlying euro zone trade performance reflects the fact that euro zone exports are starting to show some signs of stabilisation after plunging in the latter months of 2008 and start of 2009," said Howard Archer, economist at IHS Global Insight.
The euro zone economy shrank 2.5 percent quarter-on-quarter in the January-March period, its deepest fall on record, and economists said a sharply negative impact from trade was bound to be a major factor, despite the better March result.
"March's euro zone trade data confirm that the external sector is likely to have been a key driver behind the 2.5 percent fall in overall activity in the first quarter," Capital Economics said in a research note.
"But the latest figures do at least suggest that the slump in exports may have passed its trough," it said.
Unadjusted exports still fell 17 percent year-on-year in March to 108.0 billion euros while imports dropped 18 percent to 107.6 billion, the Eurostat figures showed.
But despite the global recession, exports from the euro zone's biggest economy, Germany, grew by 7.5 percent month-on-month in March to 26 billion euros and its trade surplus rose to 5.1 billion euros from 3.4 billion in February.
A more detailed breakdown of the numbers for March was not yet available, but data for January to February showed the euro zone's trade surpluses with its top two trading partners -- Britain and the United States -- fell.
The trade deficit with China eased slightly as did trade gaps with Russia, Japan and Norway.
The World Bank said earlier this month that the drop in world trade caused by the global financial crisis seemed to be bottoming out, even though it could take years to recover to pre-crisis levels.
The World Bank has forecast world trade to drop 6.1 percent this year as a result of the crisis, which made credit harder to get and led to a "very sharp" 4 percent drop in global production because of reduced demand.
The World Trade Organization has forecast trade would slide 9 percent and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development World forecast in March trade would decline by 13.2 percent in 2009. (Reporting by Jan Strupczewski; editing by Dale Hudson/Ruth Pitchford)