Food consumption and exports going through tough economic times

DESPITE A GRADUAL DECELERATION, PRICES WILL STILL BE SUBJECT TO VOLATILITY EXPOSURE

by Luigi Pelliccia Head of Federalimentare Market and Research Department

If the Western economy was hit by the pandemic in 2020, the 2022 economy was characterised by kickbacks related to the shock of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. Since its inception at the end of February 2022, the rise in the prices of energy commodities and part of foodstuffs has dramatically accelerated, injecting a new virus, i.e. inflation, which reached +9.2% in the EU last December. There has certainly been no lack of crises since the turn of the century. On the contrary, it can be said that the net reduction of Italian production levels, triggered by the financial crisis in 2008 and the sovereign debt crisis ten years ago, made the Italian production structure more competitive and resilient, so that it was able to overcome those events. In fact, we should bear in mind that domestic industrial production lost 20.6 points in the 2007-2022 comparison, while the food industry grew by 8.2 points. This gap speaks volume about the difficult changes that the Italian manufacturing perimeter has