While this is only partial data and not truly indicative of how the sector will go this year, overall it can be said – regarding these first three months – that the sector is “holding steady”. “The figures for first-quarter stone technology exports can be viewed with cautious optimism”, says Flavio Marabelli, Confindustria Marmomacchine president. “Compared to earlier predictions, our companies have been recouping nicely and in fact repeated last year’s performance, with even a slight increase. However, there is still good reason to fear a drop in overall exports by the end of the year, as can be seen in the earliest figures for the American market.”

 

And in fact the most important signals are coming the biggest foreign buyers of Italian-made stone machinery. The most significant is surely in the role the United States is playing as top purchaser. After a heavy drop in 2007 (down 31%), the first quarter of 2008 also showed a big slowdown in Italian exports to America, down from 23.4 to 15.4 million euro (a 34.2% decrease). “These figures clearly show that there’s a ‘problem’ with the USA, formerly our biggest export market. In addition to the cyclical factors peculiar to the sector”, comments Marabelli, “the reasons for this downturn obviously lie in the recession that’s hitting the country and involving its economy across the board. Furthermore, the slump in the U.S. has indirect fallout on all the stone exporter countries heavily dependent on sales to the American market, such as Brazil and Spain, with a big “domino effect” on Italy’s exports of machinery to those countries”.