Red October: -1.1% in extra-EU exports

If the first nine months of the year saw a 0.7% drop in exports, the January-October 2024 balance will hardly be better. While waiting for European data, which however in light of the trend in Germany do not promise to be spectacular, the non-EU values published by Istat add more sand in the gears of Made in Italy, with an annual drop of 1.1%. Determined in particular by a double-digit fall towards the United States and the Middle East, a slowdown that was not counterbalanced by the albeit brilliant spurt in Turkey (+33%), almost certainly (sectoral details are lacking but in recent months this has been the case) determined by gold sales, in particular from the Arezzo district.

In the first ten months of 2024, the dynamics of exports to non-EU countries is still moderately positive (+0.8%). In the same period, the trade surplus with these markets reached EUR 51.1 billion (it was +31.4 billion in the first ten months of 2023).

 In October 2024, trade with non-EU27 countries is estimated to show a cyclical decrease for exports (-3.5%) and an increase for imports (+1.1%).

 The month-on-month decrease in exports affected all the main industry groupings, with the exception of consumer durables (+8.6%); the largest reductions were in energy (-10.7%) and capital goods (-7.4%). On the import side, with the exception of intermediate goods (-4.3%), there were widespread economic increases of varying magnitude: energy (+8.0%), capital goods (+2.5%), non-durable consumer goods (+0.7%) and consumer durables (+0.1%).

 In the August-October 2024 quarter, compared to the previous quarter, exports recorded a moderate decrease (-0.2%), to which the drop in sales of energy (-18.1%) and capital goods (-4.0%) contributed. In the same period, imports showed a slight increase (+0.3%), explained by higher purchases of consumer durables (+5.4%) and non-durables (+0.6%) and intermediate goods (+1.8%).