Milan (awp/afp) – Italy suffered a trade deficit of 2.16 billion euros in June, due to soaring energy import prices, the National Institute of Statistics (Istat) said on Friday. ).
In June 2021, the eurozone’s third-largest economy posted a trade surplus of 5.67 billion euros.
If exports rose in June by 21.2% over one year, the increase in imports was much more pronounced, with a jump of 44.2%.
“Purchases of natural gas and crude oil contributed 15.7 percentage points to the sharp increase in Italian imports over one year,” comments Istat.
The markets which contributed the most to the increase in exports over one year are the United States (+25.3%), France (+16.7%) and Germany (+15.6%).
Conversely, sales to Russia fell by 19.1%, under the effect of the invasion of Ukraine.
Italy’s energy deficit has increased considerably and “exceeds 48 billion euros in the first six months of the year”, specifies Istat.
Its overall trade deficit amounted to nearly 13 billion euros over the same period.
In the first six months of 2021, Italy had generated a trade surplus of almost 29 billion euros.
Among the sectors that saw their exports increase the most over one year were base metals and metal products (+24.9%), pharmaceuticals and botanicals (+47.8%), chemical substances and products (+ 30.0%) and refined petroleum products (+100.9%).
In 2021, Italy had experienced a high annual trade surplus, at 50.4 billion euros, but it was down from 63.3 billion the previous year.
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