TOKYO, April 30 (Reuters) - Japan's industrial output rose 1.6 percent in March, the first gain in six months, in a further sign that Japan's plunge in production and exports may be nearing an end.
The bigger than expected increase follows a small rise in exports reported earlier in April, although shipments are still running around half the levels of a year ago in Japan's deepest recession since World War Two.
The rise followed a record 10.1 percent fall in industrial production in January and a 9.4 percent drop in February. The median forecast by analysts polled by Reuters had been for a 0.8 percent rise.
Signalling that the world's No.2 economy probably suffered another big contraction in the first quarter, production tumbled 22.1 percent in January-March as the plunge in global demand for Japanese cars and electronics goods hit factories hard.
It was the biggest quarterly drop since comparable data became available in 1953, marking the fourth straight quarter of decline -- the longest such sequence since 2001.
Manufacturers surveyed by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry expect output to rise 4.3 percent in April and a further 6.1 percent in May, the data showed. (Reporting by Tetsushi Kajimoto; Editing by Hugh Lawson)