Italian industry is slowing down and now the investment banks are seeing the recession

TURIN. What happens to Italian industry? For the third consecutive month, production takes a step backro than the previous one. Small, but significant: -0.3 percent. The slowdown is heavy especially on an annual basis: -3.7 percent. The data comes at a delicate moment, with a troubled maneuver that has just been approved, with the high price of petrol agitating the government and the ECB not at all determined to let go of its grip on interest rates. According to Istat data, what suffers the most is production in the energy field, which marks -4.5% on a monthly basis and -16.2% on an annual basis. In particular, among the sectors, in the supply of electricity, gas, steam and air there was a decrease of 4.5% on a monthly basis and of 17.1% on an annual basis. Also on an annual basis, the sectors of economic activity that recorded positive changes include the manufacture of means of transport and the manufacture of computers and electronic products (+7.3% for both sectors), the production of pharmaceutical base and pharmaceutical preparations (+6.4%) and the manufacture of other machinery and equipment (+2.4%).

These are numbers that worry consumer associations: “The specter of recession is looming,” says Massimiliano Dona of the Unc. «We need a change in the government’s economic policy. The executive is right in maintaining that it is necessary to focus on growth, because only if wealth is created can it then be redistributed, but to restart growth it is necessary to restore spending capacity to households. In fact, only if consumption takes off can companies return to full production, otherwise they will not have orders. Consumption represents 60% of GDP. The fact that according to today’s data it is consumer goods that are collapsing the most compared to October, after energy, must be an alarm bell for the government. If consumers don’t buy, businesses don’t produce. It’s elementary.”

It is an unknown factor that is also around investment banks. Mediobanca, in a report, speaks of a possible “slight recession” and of a country which, at the European level, is “penalized by less energy independence”. In this context, “rampant inflation” can dampen consumption. For Italy, the analysts of the investment bank write, there is a “limited room for manoeuvre” and the “execution of the Pnrr” is fundamental.