It was recently released ICE-Prometeia annual report "Evolution of foreign trade by areas and sectors", with the aim of providing Italian exporters and operators with a point of reference on the evolution of international demand and possible future scenarios, capable of correctly orienting its internationalization strategies. In recent years, the profound changes in the international economic context have placed the Italian production system in the face of new challenges and opportunities, includingexpansion of the reference markets and product diversification, both in qualitative and sectoral terms. Understanding and anticipating the evolution of these scenarios therefore assumes fundamental importance for Italian companies projected onto foreign markets.
In the course of 2012 the Eurozone markets saw a sharp decrease in imports, thus contributing decisively to the precarious aggregate results, where the growth rate of world trade has been lower than the growth of GDP. A similar dynamic has also affected the emerging European economies, where the withdrawal of exchanges of technology and intermediate goods from Western parent companies played a key role as a result of the depression that hit the final markets. On the other hand, in many emerging countries of the continent all the fragility of a development model still too dependent on the cycle of foreign investments is revealed and, therefore, not yet able to drive aggregate demand at a global level in times of negative economic cycle. In the difficult economic moment, the US and Japanese economies, representatives of so-called mature markets far from Europe, have adopted courageous and unorthodox choices to get out of the crisis by stimulating domestic demand, supporting their productive capacity, employment and household income levels. It's in the USAIn fact, that imports represent a real relaunching factor for the domestic industrial componentespecially as regards mechanical and electrical engineering. Here then is that one of the essential conditions for world trade flows to return to more sustained levels necessarily requires a recovery in European demand, on the road to a process that has begun but is incomplete, the trend reversal of which will only be seen in 2014, despite the fact that extreme risks such as sovereign defaults and the fragmentation of the Euro Area have been averted.
In this context of distrust on a general level, according to the Report Italian companies active on foreign markets appear to be sufficiently equipped to deal with the situation, given the narrowing of the differential with respect to the more competitive reference standards, despite the domestic demand front emphasizing the difficulties that characterize the entire European scenario. The number of companies that decide to internationalize has in fact increased, as has the number of exporters, which has already exceeded the quota established in 2008, while the difference between the annual variation of the internal market and that of foreign demand addressed to companies in the Belpaese has risen to almost 9 points, compared to an average of 4,7 between the years 2000-2008. And even if this last indicator says nothing about firms' actual ability to respond to foreign demand, it still represents a good approximation of the incentives for internationalisation, the levels of which have grown in line with or to a greater extent than those of the main European competitors. In this scenario, however, the major limits are given by the strong geographical specialization of exports, of which 40% concentrated in the Euro Areaprecisely where the depression in demand for consumption and investment is most acute. That's when they become more necessary than ever timely economic-institutional solutions at national and community level to implement a renewed production model for Italy capable of strengthening geographical diversification and innovative capacity with the support of the credit system, in turn relaunching employment and household income levels, the only true fuel for the economic engine of the country.
