ROME, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Industrial production has seen dramatic changes in recent months, that included the sector's temporary dropping of a rank among European countries to being the sector contributing most to growth in the European industrial output.
Italy's industrial sector finished 2018 on a low note, with a slowdown severe enough that France briefly replaced Italy as the European Union's second most important industrial power, according to data from Eurostat, the European Commission's statistical directorate (Germany remained in first).
But since then, industrial output in Italy has recovered to the point that the country contributed nearly 36 percent of the growth in the European Union's overall industrial production so far this year -- more than any other country.
How should the up-and-down performance of the sector be interpreted?
"Recent months have been a real mixed bag for Italy," Riccardo Puglisi, a political economist with the University of Pavia, told Xinhua. "But it's too early to draw a conclusion about what has been happening."
Puglisi explained that the slowdown last year could be attributed to nervousness over political issues such as the Italian government's long battle with the European Commission over the country's 2019 budget.
"It's possible that companies were worried by the political situation and that they decided to sit back to see how it would play out," he said.
The strong industrial figures in January and February (March figures have not yet been released) could just be what Puglisi called "a regression to the mean", taking advantage of the weak comparison figures. The early 2019 figures could also be bolstered by companies working to fill orders that built up the previous months.
"We won't know for a few more months whether we're seeing true growth in the industrial sector or some kind of statistical anomaly built on weak expectations," Puglisi said. "For now, I am cautious. I think the next few months will tell the true story."
Andrea Montanino, chief economist and the director of the research center for Confindustria, Italy's main industry association, agreed with Puglisi that it is premature to interpret data from such a short period. But he also said there were reasons to believe the strong performance so far this year could last.
"The pharmaceutical sector has performed strongly, and after a lull of a few months, the automobile sector is also performing well," Montanino said in an interview.
He went on: "All that said, the next few months will be a challenge because the overall European economy is slowing," he said. "It will be hard for industrial output to continue to strengthen if orders from European trading partners are reduced."
Both Puglisi and Montanino said that if the trend in industrial output continues it could be good news for Italy's wider economic prospects. The Italian economy slipped into recession in the second half of 2018, and most indicators predict the economy could have its third consecutive economic quarter of slow growth when figures for the first quarter of this year are released.
"A healthy industrial sector would go a long way toward pulling the economy back to positive growth levels," Puglisi said.
