Italy: industrial production down, but it’s probably worse than it seems …
As expected, industrial production fell in May, as it had also happened before in Germany, but it could be much worse than it appears.
In May 2022, Italian industrial production contracted by 1.1% compared to the previous month, after an increase of 1.4% revised downwards in April and in line with expectations. This was the first drop in production since January. Industrial production suffered a sharp contraction for energy (-3.9%) , while it decreased to a lesser extent for consumer goods (-0.7%) and intermediate goods (-0.6%). On the other hand, the production of capital goods increased for the fourth consecutive month (0.4%). Year-on-year, industrial production increased 3.4%, down from the revised downward 3.9% increase and below expectations of a 4% increase. Here is an explanation chart.
With the German industry, one of our main customers, already falling in March and April, we could not be constantly growing. However, the situation could be even worse than it appears for the electricity production figure
The slight growth in May is linked to the extra day and Easter, but the real comparison is to be made with the 24,000 Gigawatt / h of 2021. This is a significant decrease, which cannot be explained only by household savings, but with a decline in energy-intensive industrial production that is stronger than appears.
Usually May and June are the two months of greatest industrial production. A bad May is a harbinger of a bad year to come. It wouldn't be a surprise, given the way things are.
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The article Italy: industrial production down, but it's probably worse than it seems… comes from ScenariEconomici.it .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/italia-produzione-industriale-giu-ma-probabilmente-e-peggio-di-come-sembri/ on Fri, 08 Jul 2022 09:56:12 +0000.