We are at eighteen. Italian industrial production has recorded a decline for the eighteenth consecutive month. The country’s industrial activity in July decreased by 3.3% compared to the same month in 2023 and by 0.9% compared to June 2024. A negative trend that should not be underestimated, considering that about a fifth of Italian GDP depends on the health of industry. But it’s not just the Bel Paese that is doing badly, Germany is not smiling and neither is France.
Those -0.9% and -3.3% in July are certainly worse than expected data. In detail, there was a real collapse for the textile and clothing industry: -18.3% in July on an annual basis. The decline in the first seven months of 2024 is almost 11%. There was also a sharp stop for means of transport, dragged down to the car (-11.9%, again on an annual basis). Significant is the -4.3% of the main Italian manufacturing sector, mechanics. Pharmaceuticals recorded -1.9%, the wood industry -5.1%. The only ones that bucked the trend were chemicals (+3.9%), food, beverages and tobacco (+2.5%), the supply of electricity, gas, steam and air (+1.9%) and electronics (+1.2%).
From May 2022 to July 2024, industrial production fell by 6.7%. The industrial production index is lower than in August 2020. Then it was 99.5, now it is 94.5. But back then we were emerging from the pandemic. And the future does not give positive signs, so much so that Istat writes in black and white that the decline phase “does not seem to be over yet”. The general decline in consumption and exports and the decreased, but still high, cost of energy that weighs down the most energy-intensive industries are being discounted.
And in the rest of Europe? In Germany the signs of crisis are even more serious. Industrial production in July fell by 2.4% monthly and by 5.3% on a trend basis. In addition, in terms of growth, Berlin also has a GDP with a negative sign (-0.2% in the second quarter). In France, speaking of industrial production, the slowdown was 0.5% on a monthly basis and 2.3% on an annual basis (3% the manufacturing decline).
In the European Union, Spain is doing well. In July, industrial production increased by 4.4% compared to the same month of the previous year and gained 8.7 points compared to June (data from the National Institute of Statistics Ine). Furthermore, it is an increase that involves the entire country as a whole. The annual rate of industrial production has in fact increased in one year (July 2023-July 2024) in 14 (out of 17) Autonomous Communities and decreased in the other three.
