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Orders for transportation equipment in the euro area in November plunged to almost half the level of the same month of 2007, bringing the overall industrial orders had the biggest annual fall in the records, pointing to a recession is worse quickly.


New industrial orders in the countries using the euro fell 4.5 percent in November and a monthly 26.2 percent a year, said Thursday Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union (EU).


Economists polled by Reuters had expected a monthly fall of 4.8 percent and an annual decline of 18.8 percent.


"The new very low acute industrial orders in November highlights the current poor state of the manufacturing sector in the euro zone," said Howard Archer, economist at IHS Global Insight.


"It reinforces the idea that the region faces a deep contraction in GDP (gross domestic product) in 2009 after the recession deepened sharply in the fourth quarter of 2008," he added.


Economists said they anticipated more bad news.


"Taking together the past two months, we have seen a 10 percent drop in new orders, and this is probably just the beginning. We anticipate further significant falls in the next two or three months," said Holger Schmieding, Bank of America.


According to analysts, the data in order to increase the pressure on the European Central Bank (ECB) to continue lowering interest rates.


The agency has already cut rates by 225 basis points in four movements per month since October, to 2.0 percent this month, but has indicated that it could take a break in February to see the effects of previous cuts, before returning to ease monetary policy in March.