Listen to the audio version of the article
The sale of ships to the United States pushes the figure upwards. The comparison with the extra sales of drugs to China depresses him.
In the end, the balance of Made in Italy for the month of February compared to non-EU countries is positive, a gain of 2.1% which reverses the trend compared to the slowdown in January. Positive results are visible almost everywhere but in particular in the United States, where the 23.6% progress is however mainly determined by the export of ships. One-off maxi-orders in the absence of which – explains Istat – the general average for the month for our exports would have gone into the red by 1.7%.
The average slowing down in the opposite direction, also in this case in a one-off manner, is China, where there was a drop of 57.7%. Given that, as happened in January, it doesn’t actually matter. The collapse of values, in line with what happened in the previous month, is in fact linked to an “unequal” comparison. The one with the first months of 2023, when the anti-Covid drug Paxlovid was produced and exported from the Pfizer plant in Ascoli Piceno, a “blockbuster” tablet capable of moving the revenues of the entire US group, pushing it to a new record of revenues over 100 billions of dollars. A single drug sold at hundreds of euros per pack which in just over a year from the Ascoli site has produced over 12 billion in exports, changing provincial, regional and even national statistics, with shipments to Beijing concentrated in particular in the first months of 2023. Therefore, just as the start of production in Ascoli then doubled national exports to China, today exactly the opposite is happening: it was not right to get excited in February 2023, it is not right to get depressed today.
The average growth of 2.1% for the month is therefore to be assessed overall with some satisfaction, taking into account the progress achieved by Made in Italy in almost all geographical areas, from Japan to India, from Turkey to the Middle East.
Looking at imports, the effect of the decline in gas and crude oil prices continues to be evident, with extra-EU purchases generally decreasing by 10.4%.