Foreign Trade

Istat presents data on Italy’s foreign trade as well as unit value and volume indices (base year 2005=100) referring to December 2011. The results of the flash estimates on extra-EU trade for December 2011 has been disseminated on January 24^th .

• In December 2011 seasonally-adjusted data, compared to November 2011, showed an increase of 4.2% for export and a decrease of 0.8% for imports. The increase, for exports, was higher for non EU countries (+5.6%) than EU area (+3%). As regards imports the decrease was recorded for non EU countries only (-3,2%) compared to the growth of EU markets (+1,3%). Over the last three months, seasonally-adjusted data, in comparison with the previous three months, showed an increase of 1.4% for outgoing flows and a drop of 2.1% for incoming flows.

• In December 2011, compared with the same month of the previous year, trade rose by 5.7% for exports (+0.8% for EU area and +11.4% for non EU countries) and dropped by 8.4% for imports (-4.9% for EU and -12.5% for non EU countries). The trade balance amounted to +1.4 billion Euro (table 1) compared with -3 billion Euro registered in the same month of 2010.

In 2011, compared with the previous year, trade increased by 11.4% for exports (+8.8% for EU area and +14.9% for non EU countries) and by 8.9% for imports (+5.8% for EU and +12.6% for non EU countries). Trade balance showed a deficit of 24.3 billion Euro (table 1). It was 30 billion Euro in the 2010.