Foreign trade

Istat presents data on Italy’s foreign trade as well as unit value and volume indices (base year 2005=100) referring to April 2011. The results of the flash estimates on extra-EU trade for April 2011 has been disseminated on May 20th.

In April 2011 seasonally-adjusted data, compared to March 2011, presented an increase of 0.8% both for export or imports. The growth is more relevant in extra-EU flows: +2.8 for outgoing flows and +2.4% for incoming flows. A slight drop in export (-0.6%) and import (-0.5%) is recorded on EU markets. Over the last three months, seasonally-adjusted data, in comparison with the previous three months, showed a higher increase for incoming flows (+4.9%) than outgoing flows (+3.1%).

• In April 2011, compared with the same month of the previous year, trade raised by 12.9% for exports: 17.7% for non EU countries and 9.4% for EU area and by 20.7% (+30% for non EU and +13.4% for EU countries) for imports. The trade balance amounts to -3.8 billion Euro (table 1) compared with -1.3 billion Euro registered in the same month of 2010.

• In the first four months of 2011, compared with the same period of the previous year, trade increased by 16.9% for exports (+21.6% for non EU countries and +13.8% for EU area) and by 22.5% (+31% for non EU and +15.8% for EU countries) for imports. The trade balance showed a deficit of 17.9 billion Euro (table 1). It was 9.9 in the first period of 2010.