After nine quarters, small businesses are back in positive territory: between January and March 2014, production and turnover of the manufacturing industry respectively show +1,2% and +1,4%. These are the data from the Unioncamere Study Center identified in the usual economic survey on manufacturing companies.
The truly important aspect of the trend in the first quarter of the year, underlined by Unioncamere, is that linked to the results of companies with less than 49 employees, which survived the deep crisis. For them, the breakeven in production is combined with a very small increase in turnover (+0,2%) and an increase in exports (+4,1%) which does not align with the average figure for the sector (+4,8%) and the performance of companies with over 50 employees (+5,2%).
"The only alarm bell - adds Unioncamere - is the Centre-South, which is still unable to catch up with the recovery".
