BRUSSELS, June 17 (Reuters) - The euro zone's unadjusted external trade surplus increased in April as the year-on-year plunge in exports was marginally smaller than in imports, data showed on Wednesday.
The surplus in the 16 countries using the euro came to 2.7 billion euros ($3.75 billion), compared with an upwardly revised 1.8 billion euro surplus in March and a 2.2 billion surplus in April 2008, European Union statistics office Eurostat said.
Unadjusted exports fell 27 percent year-on-year to 102.1 billion euros and imports dropped 28 percent to 99.4 billion.
Seasonally adjusted, the trade balance continued a trend of narrowing deficits since January. The gap shrank to 300 million euros from March's 1.8 billion as exports fell 1.3 percent month-on-month and imports declined 2.7 percent.
The euro zone economy contracted 2.5 percent quarter-on-quarter in the January-March period -- its deepest fall on record -- in what economists said was likely the low point of the recession.
Negative trade on the back of exports plunging faster than imports lowered the quarterly result by 0.3 percentage point.
Separately, Eurostat said construction output in the euro zone rose 0.6 percent month-on-month in April for the second month running, limiting the year-on-year drop to 4.7 percent versus 8.3 percent in March and 12.5 percent in February. (Reporting by Jan Strupczewski, editing by Dale Hudson)