Imports: the war in Ukraine could cost Italy a surcharge of over 110 billion euros
War imposes on Italy a "tax" on imports which could exceed 110 billion euros. The prices of food and raw materials - starting with energy - were already on the rise before Russia invaded Ukraine, but with the conflict, inflation has accelerated considerably. And so, on the import front, the bill is getting more and more salty.
Italian imports: by how much can prices increase?
In a recent analysis, the Observatory on Italian public accounts paints two scenarios:
- the increase compared to 2019 would be 75 billion, more than doubling the total, to 144 billion, in the (unlikely) hypothesis that prices stabilize at the levels of January 2022 (therefore immediately before the war);
- if instead, as seems more likely, the geopolitical scenario were to keep prices at the particularly high levels reached in March, the increase in the cost of Italian imports could reach 113 billion euros, pushing the total to 182 billion, or almost three times as much as in 2019.
Correction of previous estimates
The Observatory thus corrects, with a clear upward revision, the initial estimates disseminated immediately after the start of the war, which spoke of a higher cost in the order of 57-66 billion euros.
“The main cause of this increase – explains the Observatory – concerns the Istat's upward revision of natural gas import prices for the entire second half of 2021, almost tripled compared to the initial estimate”.
The term of comparison is always 2019 because 2020, due to the pandemic, was characterized by an unusually low level of imports.
