Foreign trade data in the year 2023

Source: press office Presidency of the Chamber of Commerce of Treviso Belluno|Dolomiti

The comment of President Mario Pozza

“The dynamics of exports in our territories, for the year 2023, are conditioned by two factors,” comments Mario Pozza, President of the Chamber of Commerce of Treviso and Belluno|Dolomiti: the slowdown in international demand, repeatedly highlighted in our surveys on manufacturing, and a process of return of raw material prices, which is reflected in export prices.

Veneto region’s exports close the year in a situation of stationarity (-0.3%), which must be red within this framework and which can be interpreted, for the time being, as a substantial hold. The export of the province of Treviso,” continues Pozza, “is almost in line with the regional trend (-1.1%), but from the data we can see sectors with opposing trends: to mention the most emblematic ones, industrial machinery is doing well, our first export item which grew by +9.1% compared to 2022, with +238 million euro of higher sales); on the other hand, furniture is doing badly (-8.4%), the second export item of the Marca, which leaves on the ground lower sales for -170 million, mainly due to important decreases in Germany, the United States and the United Kingdom.

On the other hand, exports from Belluno are on the upswing (+6.6%) thanks to the good performance of eyewear (+8.6%), except in the USA. Belluno exports of industrial machinery also held up well (+7.3%): a variation that is confirmed in most foreign markets.

The trend of exports to the United States, especially for consumer goods, remains to be further investigated,” the President underlines. “The drop in sales from Treviso to the USA was -5.7%, with more accentuated downturns for exports of beverages, i.e. Prosecco (-9.4%) for lower sales of Euro -27 million, and for exports of furniture (-19%) for lower sales of Euro -39 million.
It is also interesting,’ adds Pozza, ‘to compare these results with the national data: in some sectors of consumer goods, Italian exports to the USA are holding up, unlike those of our territories. Three examples: gold jewellery (Vicenza is bad, Tuscany (Arezzo) and Piedmont (Valenza Po) are doing well); beverages (Franciacorta, Emilia-Romagna, Trentino Alto-Adige are doing well), leather goods (Tuscany is growing in the USA by +31.2%, Veneto is contracting by -14.3%).

These are data on which we will have to conduct in-depth reflection,’ the President concluded. Because if it goes wrong for everyone is one thing, but in this case it seems clear that some of our ‘competitor’ territories know how to do better than us, or at least know how to better exploit this confused phase of slowing demand, conquering market segments that are holding up. Fortunately, things are going well for exports of instrumental, intermediate, or technical goods to the USA: with reference to Treviso data, sales of machinery (+6.0%), metal carpentry products (+9.3%), and sports footwear (+4.9%) are holding up.

We nevertheless still remain two provinces whose exports, added together, exceed 21 billion euro,’ Pozza points out.
Belluno’s exports, growing further in 2023, have broken through the 5 billion ‘wall’ (almost 5.3 to be exact). Treviso, despite the slight drop we were talking about, consolidated its exports at around 16.2 billion euro. Data that confirm a great capacity of projection abroad of our companies, even in complex scenarios such as those we are experiencing, and also knowing how to intercept expanding markets such as Mexico, Turkey and the Arab Emirates, to mention those with consistent variations.

The regional picture

Istat has published data on the trade interchange of Italian regions and provinces for the entire year 2023.

Veneto exports are confirmed at around 82 billion euro, but with a slightly negative annual variation (-0.3%) that translates into lower sales of 286 million euro compared to the 2022 results. Stable national exports, supported by higher sales of pharmaceutical products and motor vehicles, particularly from some southern regions.

These data suddenly overshadow the double-digit growth of past years, particularly the post-Covid recovery.
Two factors contribute to explaining this result: the slowdown in international demand, repeatedly highlighted by the economic surveys on manufacturing; and the deflation of producer prices, the result of that process of normalisation of raw material prices repeatedly referred to by various analysts.

The disjointed trend for values and quantities well highlights this combined price/demand effect on export dynamics: in particular, in the second half of 2023, the contraction in values (-3.4% on a trend basis) is more pronounced than the similar change in quantities (-0.8%), the component that had slowed down the most in the first part of the year.

Imports are even more sensitive to this combination of factors: in Veneto, in fact, they fell by -11.8%, for lower imports of EUR -8.5 billion, against a drop in quantity of -4.9%.
But it must be said immediately that 79% of the drop of import value is attributable to chemical products, metallurgy, and energy, all commodities affected by strong price increases in past years. Energy products, in particular, included here in this first analysis in the aggregate ‘mining and quarrying products’, see imports in value fall from EUR 8 billion in 2022 to the current EUR 4 billion (and we are still a long way from the values of 2019: EUR 1.6 billion).

Returning to exports by sectors, some of them seem to escape this underlying dynamic, conditioned by prices and slowing demand. Industrial machinery, the leading regional export item, sees its sales abroad grow by +7.8% in 2023 compared to the previous year (from EUR 15.1 billion to EUR 16.3 billion). Also growing are eyewear (+6.2%), food products (+8.2%), agricultural products (+14.9%) and, to a lesser extent, beverages (+1.5%), which include wine.

On the other hand, the sectors with the most negative export changes are: paper and printing (-22.9%), metallurgy (-14.2%, plausible here the combined effect of falling demand and falling prices), transport equipment and components (-9.5%), rubber and plastic products (-9.2%), tanning and leather processing (-7.8%), and yarns and textiles (-6.1%).

Veneto exports in value and quantity

Trend percentage changes

An initial analysis of the markets shows that Veneto exports to non-EU areas are doing worse (-1.8% compared to 2022), against +0.7% for EU27 sales. There were fears for the trend of exports to Germany, which instead remained slightly positive (+0.5%). Sales to France (+3.7%) and Spain (+1.5%) fared even better. On the other hand, the negative data for the United States were surprising (-6.1%), resulting in lower sales of EUR 490 million. To which must be added -3.7% of exports to the United Kingdom, -4.0% to Switzerland, -6.6% to China and Hong Kong, and -11.6% to Russia. Veneto’s exports also fell in Canada (-6.2%) and Australia (-6.8%).

(…) Read more in the Press Release (in italian)

Translated by Cecilia Flaccavento
Intern at the Chamber of Commerce of Treviso – Belluno|Dolomites