• Coronavirus. Confcommercio: 82% of companies reopened but 30% are at risk of closure
  • Confcommercio: "Companies at risk, 270 thousand closures and 420 thousand fewer seats"
  • GDP 2020, Confcommercio: -1% and 18 billion less consumption
  • Industry. Istat, April orders -32.2%, -49% on the year
  • Istat, exceptional decrease in GDP in the first quarter of 2020

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18 June 2020 The collapse of Italy's foreign trade in April 2020 is reflected in a deficit trade balance for the first time in years, down 4 billion euros from the surplus of the previous year. Istat estimates that the Italian balance will drop from +2.85 billion in April 2019 to -1.15 billion in April 2020. Net of energy products there is a surplus of 105 million euro (it was +6.420 million in April 2019).

In April, the fall in foreign demand and the containment measures of the Covid-19 epidemic in Italy and in the main partner countries led to a contraction, both cyclically and tendentially, of foreign trade, of an amount never recorded since birth , in 1993, of the European single market. Istat reports "a sharp economic downturn for both foreign trade flows, much more intense for exports (-34.9%) than for imports (-18.5%)".

The marked monthly decrease in exports is due to the sharp drop in sales both to non-EU markets (-37.3%) and, to a relatively lesser extent, to the EU area (-32.7%). In the February-April 2020 quarter, compared to the previous one, there was a decrease of -18.9% for exports and -18.3% for imports. In April 2020 the decrease on an annual basis of exports is equal to - 41.6% and involves both the non-EU area (-44%), to a greater extent, and the EU area (-39.4%).

The decrease in imports (-33.7%) is marked for both markets: purchases from the EU area decrease by -34.6% and those from non-EU countries by -32.5%. "The collapse in sales on foreign markets of machinery, metals and means of transport explains half of the downward trend in exports; the drop in purchases of motor vehicles and oil a third of the fall in imports. In April the trade balance turns negative ", comments the Institute .