BERLIN, July 9 (Reuters) - The German economy may have exited a recession in the second quarter of this year, a senior government official said on Thursday.
"Gross domestic product could have been flat or may have even grown very slightly in the second quarter," the official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.
"This isn't an upswing yet, it's a normalisation after the big economic slump," the official added.
Europe's largest economy posted a record contraction of 3.8 percent quarter-on-quarter in the first three months of 2009 and has shrunk in every quarter since the April-June period of 2008.
The government has forecast the economy will shrink by 6 percent overall in 2009, which would be a contraction nearly seven times more severe than in any year since World War Two.
Recent economic indicators suggest that the German economy is starting to exit the slump, which has hit manufacturers particularly hard. The Federal Statistics Office is due to give a preliminary estimate of second quarter GDP on August 13.
(Reporting by Rene Wagner, writing by Dave Graham)