Burton Mills: Italy Industrial Output Exceeds Predictions

Taipei, Taiwan, February 14, 2018 (Newswire.com) - Burton Mills: According to data recently released by ISTAT, the national statistics bureau, Italy's industrial output was better than forecast in December when the country posted its biggest monthly increase in almost 2 years.

Burton Mills economists say the 1.6 percent increase in productivity was the largest since January two years ago and came after a 0.2 percent rise in November of last year. It was the third straight monthly increase and the seventh in the last eight months.

The increase in productivity will be seen as very good news by the governing Democratic Party which has been losing popularity in opinion polls and is in dire need of positive economic developments in the run up up to parliamentary elections due to take place on the 4^th of March.

In the period from October to December last year, industrial productivity was up 0.8 percent from the third quarter, slightly down from a 1.6 percent increase in the second quarter.

Burton Mills economists say that Italian industrial output often runs parallel with trends in GDP which increased 0.4 percent in the period from July to September, a slight increase from 0.3 percent in the months from April to June.

ISTAT is due to release data from the fourth quarter later this week.

Industrial output dropped by approximately 25 percent between 2008 and 2014 and has only recovered a small portion of that over the last three years.

The government of Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni predicts that GDP will increase by 1.5 percent in 2017. Burton Mills economists say that although this will be Italy's strongest rate of growth since 2010, Italy still has one of the worst performing economies in the Eurozone.

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Source: Burton Mills