State of the Industry Report 2018: Slowdown in foreign trade for Italian manufacturers of machinery, equipment and moulds for plastics and rubber
Imports +11.4%, exports -0.6% in the period January-September 2018 with respect to the first three quarters of 2017 according to analyses by theAmaplast Statistical Studies Centre of ISTAT foreign trade data. The strong growth in imports, while remaining in the double digits, slowed significantly compared to +26% in March and +23% in June. Exports remained weak: toward the end of the period they dipped into negative figures and back into positive by a few decimal points on more than one occasion. The balance of trade, well in the black at 1.62 billion euros, contracted by five percentage