Piedmont, export slowdown in the Middle East

The ongoing conflicts between Arab countries are holding back Piedmont's exports to the Middle East. According to data from the Confartigianato Imprese Studies Office - which analysed Piedmontese exports to the Middle East market in 2023 and 2024, based on ISTAT sources - there was a drop of -7.6% between the first half of 2024 and the same period in 2023 compared to +2.2% in the previous reference period. Goods and services from Piedmont to the Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Qatar, Kuwait and 12 other Middle Eastern nations amount to 2.6 billion euros, equal to 2.09% of the regional added value produced, a figure that makes Piedmont the second region, after Tuscany, with the greatest exposure of exports to the negative effects of political instability in the Middle East. In addition to refining products, there are food and beverages, fashion and design, stone and furniture, computer and digital systems; machinery and equipment are the best-selling products, in high demand for their quality and originality.

"The news arriving from the Middle East, from the southern shore of the Mediterranean, is very worrying: we hope that diplomacy, including economic diplomacy, is intervening to resolve these situations," commented Giorgio Felici, president of Confartigianato Imprese Piemonte. "This crisis is penalising both the Piedmontese and Italian-made systems, and the supply of essential products for manufacturing processing, exacerbating the slowdown in trade. If the situation does not stabilise quickly, there is a real risk that exports will suffer a sharp slowdown, with repercussions not only on exporting companies, but also on the regional economy as a whole. In this context,' he concludes, 'it is crucial that local and national institutions intervene, adopting measures to support businesses, to keep trade channels open and mitigate the potential negative effects.

The president of Confartigianato Imprese Piemonte also points out that 'our region has a formidable agricultural machinery sector, concentrated in the province of Cuneo, and if the crisis in the Middle East had not worsened, we would have had outlets.

Felici believes, however, that geopolitical instability is not the only cause of Piedmont's export problems: 'I fear that the current trend will not be reversed in a positive direction with the end of the current conflicts because we are still missing the completion of the logistics chain and we do not have a prepared and competent political class.

At present, no data is available on the trend of Piedmontese exports to the Middle East by sector, but the president of Confartigianato Piemonte explains that the Piedmontese figure is in line with the national one, according to which the most relevant sector is machinery and equipment with 25.3% of exports, followed by other manufacturing (furniture, jewellery and eyewear) with 12.5%, fashion with 9.2%, transport equipment with 8.8%, metallurgy and metals with 7.7%, food and beverages with 7.2% and electrical equipment with 7.0%.