20/6/2011 00:00:00
According to Istat, the industry sales in April rose, seasonally adjusted, by 1.5% from the previous month, with increments of 1.7% on the domestic market, and 1.3% on the foreign market. As average of the last three months (February-April), the index increased by 4.2% over the previous three months (November-January). Adjusted for calendar effects (working days were 20 against 21 in April 2010) the turnover grew by 14.2% in trend terms. After a sharp increase from the previous month, there is a reduction in total orders equal to 6.4%, reflecting a decrease of 2.6% of domestic orders and 12.1% of those from abroad. In the average of the quarter total orders increased by 6.7% over the previous quarter. In comparison with the month of April 2010, raw orders record a growth of 5.8%. The seasonally adjusted indices of turnover mark cyclical increases of 5.0% for capital goods, 2.3% for energy and 1, 6% for consumer goods. Within the latter, the long-lasting goods decrease by 3.0%, while non-durable goods increased by 2.5%. The intermediate goods recorded a decrease of 1.0%. In the trend comparison, the broader contribution to revenue growth comes from the foreign component relative to intermediate goods. The sectors of economic activity for which there are, compared to April 2010, the largest increases of total sales are the manufacture of coke and refined petroleum products (+30.1%) and manufacturing of chemical products (+26.1 %). As for orders, further trend increases are observed for the manufacturing of chemical products (+22.0%) and metallurgy and manufacture of metal products (+9.9%).
