Foreign trade

Istat presents data on Italy’s foreign trade as well as unit value and volume indices (base year 2005=100) referring to May 2011. The results of the flash estimates on extra-EU trade for May 2011 has been disseminated on June 22nd.

• In May 2011 seasonally-adjusted data, compared to April 2011, presented a slight increase of 0.1% for export and a decrease of 0.3 for imports. An increase in export (+1.0%) and import (+1.3%) is recorded on EU markets, while a reduction occurs for extra-EU flows: -1.0 for outgoing flows and -2.2% for incoming flows. Over the last three months, seasonally-adjusted data, in comparison with the previous three months, showed a higher increase for incoming flows (+4.3%) than outgoing flows (+2.7%).

• In May 2011, compared with the same month of the previous year, trade raised by 19.9% for exports (20.9% for non EU countries and 19.2% for EU area) and by 18.9% (+20.5% for non EU and +17.6% for EU countries) for imports. The trade balance amounts to -2.4 billion Euro (table 1) compared with -2.3 billion Euro registered in the same month of 2010.

• In the first five months of 2011, compared with the same period of the previous year, trade increased by 17.6% for exports (+21.4% for non EU countries and +14.9% for EU area) and by 21.7% (+28.8% for non EU and +16.2% for EU countries) for imports. The trade balance showed a deficit of 20.4 billion Euro (table 1). It was 12.2 in the same period of 2010.