Foreign trade

Istat presents data on Italy’s foreign trade as well as unit value and volume indices (base year 2005=100) referring to March 2011. The results of the flash estimates on extra-EU trade for March 2011 has been disseminated on April 21st.

In March 2011 seasonally-adjusted data, compared to February 2011, presented an increase more relevant in incoming flows (+3,9%) then in outgoing flows (+1.7%) with a similar trend both on extra-EU markets (+3.5% for imports and +1.6% for exports) or on EU markets (+4.2% for imports and +1.9% for exports). Over the last three months, seasonally-adjusted data, in comparison with the previous three months, showed a more similar increase: +5% for outgoing flows and +5.4% for incoming flows.

In March 2011, compared with the same month of the previous year, trade raised by 14.1% for exports (16.5% for non EU countries and 12.4% for EU area) and by 20.4% (+24.2% for non EU and +17.4% for EU countries) for imports. The trade balance amounts to -3.9 billion Euro (table 1) compared with -1.7 billion Euro registered in the same month of 2010.

In the first quarter of 2011, compared with the same period of the previous year, trade increased by 18.4% for exports (23% for non EU countries and 15.3% for EU area) and by 23.1% (31.4 for non EU and 16.6% for EU countries) for imports. The trade balance showed a deficit of 14.2 billion Euro (table 1). It was 8.6 in the first quarter of 2010.

For further details, please see CONISTAT or refer to the Italian version

According to the SDDS programme of the IMF, Istat publishes data of this press release on the National Summary Data Page and disseminates an annual calendar of press releases both on Istat and SDDS website.