BERLIN, June 7 (Xinhua) -- Container ship congestion has reached the North Sea as global trade is increasingly affected by disruptions and delays, the German Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel) said on Tuesday.

       "For the first time since the outbreak of the (COVID-19) pandemic, container ships are also jammed in the North Sea off the ports of Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium," IfW Kiel said in its latest Trade Indicator.

       Almost two percent of global cargo capacities are currently stuck off the coasts of the three countries and can neither be loaded nor unloaded, it said.

       In Germany, around a dozen large container ships with a total capacity of around 150,000 standard containers are waiting to call at the ports Hamburg or Bremerhaven, the institute said. The situation off the ports of Rotterdam and Antwerp is "even more dramatic."

       Despite the global supply chain issues, Germany's exports rose by 4.4 percent month-on-month to 126.4 billion euros (135.1 billion U.S. dollars) in April. At the same time, imports of Europe's largest economy grew 3.1 percent to 122.8 billion euros, according to the Federal Statistical Office.

       "German foreign trade is currently benefiting from order books that are still well filled from the past and are now being worked off," said Dirk Jandura, president of the German Federation of Wholesale, Foreign Trade and Services (BGA). (1 euro = 1.07 U.S. dollars)