We described see Il Mattino on May 15th the change in pace of the growth of Noon. Today, going down the branches of change, we describe the pace of exports. The technique is the same and looks at two periods: the first goes from the beginning of the statistics (in the case of regional exports, from the year 2000) to the last quarter of 2019, immediately before the two “black swans” that hit the world economy (first pandemic, and then wars); the second starts from where the first arrives and goes up to the last quarter of 2023. The Istat data are not seasonally adjusted, and we have therefore adopted a rudimentary seasonal adjustment, taking the 4-quarter moving series for the value of regional exports. The change in pace can be seen by first making the start value of the first period equal to 100 (Q4 2000), and seeing where we arrive at the end of 2019. And then making the start value of the second period equal to 100 ( T4 2019) and seeing where we get to at the end of 2023.
The first graph speaks for itself: in the twenty years of the first period, exports from the Centre-North surpassed the trends of the Noon (the graph represents the dynamics, not the levels, which are, obviously, much higher north of Garigliano). But in the following four years, almost five years, the dynamics changed: exports from the South grew more than those from the Centre-North. And this growth spurt accelerated in 2023, despite two factors that worked to disadvantage the South. The first factor lies in the fact that the export of refined petroleum products (especially important for the islands Sicily and Sardinia and for Basilicata), slowed down last year, due to the fall in the price of oil and gas (export data are in value, not in volume). The second factor lies in the fact that the Centre-North benefited in 2023 from an anomalous surge in the export of pharmaceutical products from the Marche (the 371% increase from Ascoli Piceno to China of an anti-Covid drug Paxlovid produced by the Pfizer plant of Ascoli Piceno).
These negative factors were more than compensated by the increase in exports of motor vehicles, pharmaceuticals, chemical-medicinal and botanical products from Campania (Naples in particular). But not only. In the whole of 2023, the increase in exports is more marked for the South (excluding islands, +16.8%) and more limited for the North-West (+2.7%), while there is a decline for the North -east (-1.0%) and the Center (-3.4%) and a clear contraction for the Islands (-21.0%). The most dynamic regions for exports are Campania (+28.9%), Molise (+21.1%), Calabria (+20.9%), Abruzzo (+13.6%), while all the regions of the Center -North have single-digit or negative increases.
The same exercise as above was done for two symbolic regions, Lombardy and Campania: the first is the largest exporting region in the Centre-North, the second the largest in the South. The second graph shows how the growth advantage of Lombardy in the first period, it changed direction in the second, after a powerful boost from Campania’s exports.
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