Tuscany’s exports. Balance 2023

In short:

• The year 2023 closed with a decline in the export dynamics of Italy and the main regions.
• Tuscany is not escaping the progressive slowdown in foreign demand, although it remains on positive ground on an annual basis and above the national average.
• The growth of regional exports was concentrated on a few qualified products: pharmaceuticals, general-purpose machinery, and, among means of transport, nautical and caravan products.
• On the other hand, the losses on the other main productions were heavy. Most specialisations in the fashion industry and several basic industry sectors, such as paper and chemicals, declined.
• Among the market areas, the dynamics were particularly weak for the European ones, both among the EU member countries and the others. On the other hand, the performance obtained in the more distant destination markets, from North America to the Asian economies, on which the results of the most dynamic sectors of Tuscan exports in 2023 weighed most heavily.

Note: Istat revised the data at a date later than the period in which the calculations for this note were carried out. The revision did not substantially change the values commented on, with the sole exception of the exports of the province of Prato. As already written in the note, a substantial part of the province’s export growth was due to movements of a purely logistic nature, unrelated to the dynamics of the area’s production system. In the re-attribution of flows carried out by Istat, part of the problem has been resolved and the % variation of provincial exports has gone from +12.0% reported in Table 3 to -1.9%.