Global| Feb 19 2009Italy's Trade Flows Dive In December
Summary
Italy’s exports fell in December but imports plunged helping to boost the trade account and to shift the balance of trade on goods into surplus in December. Italy’s current account deficit is still on a deteriorating trend, even with [...]
Italy’s exports fell in December but imports plunged helping to boost the trade account and to shift the balance of trade on goods into surplus in December. Italy’s current account deficit is still on a deteriorating trend, even with the improvement in December. And despite the December performance of exports, both exports and imports are on similarly plunging trends over 3-mos 6-mos and 12 mos. Imports are falling faster over most horizons except the most recent ones. Now the three-month export growth rate is just as bad as the rate of imports. Italy’s services exports flows are doing much worse than imports. Recession generally reigns in imports as we are seeing here. Italy’s weak exports are a function of recessions in its trade partners.
| Italy's Trade Trends | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| m/mo % monthly rate | Period Specified saar | ||||||
| Dec-08 | Nov-08 | Oct-08 | 3-MO | 6-Mo | 12-Mo | Yr-Ago | |
| Current Account Bal | €€ (4,121) | €€ (4,787) | €€ (3,854) | €€ (4,254) | €€ (4,107) | €€ (4,092) | €€ (3,114) |
| Goods Balance | €€ 132 | €€ (676) | €€ 716 | €€ 57 | €€ (341) | €€ 61 | €€ 251 |
| Exports | -0.7% | -10.6% | 0.7% | -36.1% | -6.6% | 1.6% | -4.4% |
| Imports | -3.4% | -6.4% | -1.7% | -37.5% | -11.5% | -2.5% | -0.1% |
| Services Balance | €€ (1,074) | €€ (849) | €€ (1,747) | €€ (1,223) | €€ (846) | €€ (636) | €€ (583) |
| Exports | -0.2% | -12.3% | 1.7% | -37.2% | -0.3% | -7.7% | 15.2% |
| Imports | 2.8% | -19.4% | 15.5% | -16.4% | 18.7% | 4.5% | 8.5% |
Robert Brusca
AuthorMore in Author Profile »Robert A. Brusca is Chief Economist of Fact and Opinion Economics, a consulting firm he founded in Manhattan. He has been an economist on Wall Street for over 25 years. He has visited central banking and large institutional clients in over 30 countries in his career as an economist. Mr. Brusca was a Divisional Research Chief at the Federal Reserve Bank of NY (Chief of the International Financial markets Division), a Fed Watcher at Irving Trust and Chief Economist at Nikko Securities International. He is widely quoted and appears in various media. Mr. Brusca holds an MA and Ph.D. in economics from Michigan State University and a BA in Economics from the University of Michigan. His research pursues his strong interests in non aligned policy economics as well as international economics. FAO Economics’ research targets investors to assist them in making better investment decisions in stocks, bonds and in a variety of international assets. The company does not manage money and has no conflicts in giving economic advice.
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