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Italy: Flirting with technical recession – ING

Paolo Pizzoli, senior economist at ING, notes that the Italy’s seasonally-adjusted industrial production measure contracted by 1.6% month-on-month (from a downwardly revised -0.1% MoM in October).

Key Quotes

“The working day-adjusted YoY reading, better suited to monitor the trend, was also sharply down to -2.6% (from +1% in October), the lowest reading since October 2014. Production contracted by 2-4% MoM in intermediate goods, 1.7% MoM in investment goods and 0.9% in consumer goods. Only energy production managed to post a 1% MoM increase.”

“The November production reading adds serious doubt about GDP growth over 4Q18. Over the Sep-Nov quarter, industry data on a seasonally-adjusted basis, contracted 0.1% QoQ and confidence data has deteriorated further overall.”

“On past form, both the ESI and our computed PMI composite measure for Italy for 4Q18 are consistent with a contraction of Italian GDP in 4Q18. We are now pencilling in a second consecutive 0.1% QoQ GDP contraction in 4Q18, which would mark the start of a technical recession.”

Author

Sandeep Kanihama

Sandeep Kanihama

FXStreet Contributor

Sandeep Kanihama is an FX Editor and Analyst with FXstreet having principally focus area on Asia and European markets with commodity, currency and equities coverage. He is stationed in the Indian capital city of Delhi.

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