Regional exports in free fall in 2023.
The last quarter of the past year in fact certified a negative variation of -24%.
The overall value of island products sold abroad went from 8.98 billion to 6.80 billion: a drop of over two billion euros. Things change if we exclude the oil refining sector (which represents over 82% of the total), but not in substance: in 2023, regional exports, even net of hydrocarbon processing, fell by -13% , leaving around 174 million euros on the street, in practice, the annual exports of the entire chemical-pharmaceutical sector (the fourth in value of Sardinian manufacturing exports).
This can be seen from a dossier from the Cna Sardinia Study Center which also analyzes export prospects for the current year: at the beginning of the year overall Sardinian exports grew (+8.9%) compared to the same period of 2023, but the data becomes negative net of the oil sector (-1.3%); in the manufacturing sector, oil (+11%) and agri-food (+6.1%) performed well, the chemical industry recovered (+21.5%), metallurgical manufacturing performed poorly (-29.6%) .
2023 confirmed the collapse of the chemical-pharmaceutical sector (-33%, from 263 million to 177 million euros), while metal products held firm (+7.6% compared to 2022, reaching 232.6 million EUR). The agri-food sector grew by +4.7% (245.8 million in foreign turnover, compared to 234 in 2022). Dairy products continued to dominate (+9.8% in value in 2023, +3.3% in the first quarter of 2024). Sardinian oil boom: 2023 closed with a brilliant +12.2%, which brought the value of Sardinian oil sold abroad to exceed 6.7 million euros. In 2024 exports more than doubled in value (+165%): over 1.7 million euros more in sales compared to the first quarter of 2023 The wine industry did well in the first quarter of 2024 with +6.5% in recovery in 2023 -6.3%. In 2023, the export value of pecorino and Sardinian sweets grew by +9%, but the dynamics of the quantities sold (in kg) recorded a decline of -5.4%.
After the peak in June 2023 (15.1 euros per kg) the unit price gradually fell, reaching 13.3 euros in March of the current year. “It is necessary – comment Luigi Tomasi and Francesco Porcu, president and secretary respectively regional CNA Sardinia – an industrial strategy and coherent medium and long-term public policies to increase the specialization and competitive capacity of our economy, strengthening production chains, orienting investments on innovation, human capital, aggregation processes”.
