Italy is the country in Europe that is being most affected by the Corona Virus and according to the Football Italia website is dealing with it in Italian fashion.
In yet another change of plan, it’s reported tomorrow’s Juventus-Milan Coppa Italia semi-final will be called off due to the Corona virus outbreak.
In fact that may just be the start of it.
News agency ANSA claim the Government is considering a suspension of all sporting events in Italy for a month due to the Coronavirus outbreak, as another 27 people died over the last 24 hours.
Thus the sad human cost is being added to by disruption elsewhere which reminds us that only last week we noted that tourism represents about 13% of the Italian economy. Again sticking with recent news there cannot be much demand for Italian cars from China right now.
China has also suffered its biggest monthly drop in car sales ever, in another sign of economic pain.
New auto sales slumped by 80% year-on-year in February, the China Passenger Car Association reports. ( The Guardian )
Actually that,believe it or not is a minor improvement on what it might have been.
Astonishingly, that’s an improvement on the 92% slump recorded in the first two weeks of February. It underlines just how much economic activity has been wiped out by Beijing’s efforts to contain the coronavirus.
Backing this up was a services PMI reading of 26.5 in China and if I recall correctly even Greece only went into the low thirties.
GDP
The outlook here looks grim according to the Confederation of Italian industry.
ITALY‘S BUSINESS LOBBY CONFINDUSTRIA SEES ITALIAN GDP FALLING IN Q1, CONTRACTING MORE STRONGLY IN Q2 DUE TO CORONAVIRUS OUTBREAK ( @DeltaOne )
This comes on the back of this morning’s final report on the last quarter of 2019.
In the fourth quarter of 2019, gross domestic product (GDP), expressed in chain-linked values with reference year 2015, adjusted for calendar effects and seasonally adjusted, decreased by 0.3% compared to the previous quarter and increased by 0.1 % against the fourth quarter of 2018.
That is actually an improvement for the annual picture as it was previously 0% but the follow through for this year is not exactly optimistic.
The carry-over annual GDP growth for 2020 is equal to -0.2%.
That was not the only piece of bad news as the detail of the numbers is even worse than it initially appeared.
Compared to previous quarter, final consumption expenditure decreased by 0.2 per cent, gross fixed capital formation by 0.1 per cent and imports by 1.7 per cent, whereas exports increased by 0.3 per cent.
There is a small positive in exports rising in a trade war but the domestic numbers especially the fall in imports are really rather poor. If you crunch the numbers then the lower level of imports boosted GDP by 0.5% on a quarterly basis.
The long-term chart provided with the data is also rather chilling. It shows an Italian quarterly economic output which peaked at around 453 billion Euros in early 2008 which then fell to around 420 billion. So far so bad, but then it gets worse as Italy has just recorded 430.1 billion so nowhere near a recovery. All these are numbers chain-linked to 2015.
Markit Business Survey
This feels like something from a place far, far away but this is what they have reported this morning.
Italian services firms recorded a further increase in business activity during February, extending the current sequence of growth to nine months. Moreover, the expansion was the quickest since October last year, as order book volumes rose at the fastest rate for four months. Signs of improved demand led firms to take on more staff and job creation accelerated to a moderate pace.
They go further with this.
The Composite Output Index* posted 50.7 in February, up
from 50.4 in January, to signal a back-to-back expansion in
Italian private sector output. The reading signalled a modest monthly increase in business activity.
Mind you even they seem rather unsure about it all.
“Nonetheless, Italian private sector growth remains
historically subdued”
You mean a number which has been “historically subdued” is now a sort of historically subdued squared?
ECB
This is rather stuck between a rock and a hard place. It has already cut interest-rates to -0.5% and is doing some 20 billion Euros of QE bond buying a month. Thus it has little scope to respond which is presumably why there are reports it did not discuss monetary policy on its emergency conference call yesterday. In spite of that there are expectations of a cut to -0.6% at its meeting next week.
Has it come to this? ( The Streets)
As you can see this would be an example of to coin a phrase fiddling while Rome Burns. Does anybody seriously believe a 0.1% interest-rate cut would really make any difference when we have had so many much larger cuts already? Indeed if they do as CNBC has just suggested they will look even sillier as why did they not join the US Federal Reserve yesterday?
ECB and BOE expected to take immediate policy action on coronavirus impact.
Those in charge of the Euro area must so regret leaving the ECB in the hands of two politicians. No doubt it seemed clever at the time with Mario Draghi essentially setting policy for them. But now things have changed.
Fiscal Policy
This is the new toy for central bankers and there is a new Euro area vibe for this.
French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire says the euro-area must prepare fiscal stimulus to use if the economic situation deteriorates due to the coronavirus outbreak ( Bloomberg)
That is a case of suggesting what you are doing because as we have previously noted France had a fiscal stimulus of around 1% of GDP last year. But of course back when she was the French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde was an enthusiast “shock and awe” for exactly the reverse being applied to Greece and others.
The ECB has already oiled the wheels for some fiscal expansionism by the way its QE bond buying has reduced bond yields. It could expand its monthly purchases again but would run into “trouble,trouble,trouble” in Germany and the Netherlands, pretty quickly.
Comment
If we return to a purely Italian perspective we see some of the policy elements are already in play. For example the ten-year yield is a mere 0.94% although things get more awkward as the period over which it has fallen has also seen a fall in economic growth. The fiscal policy change below is relatively minor.
Italy is planning to hike its 2020 budget deficit target to 2.4% of its GDP from 2.2% to provide the economy with the funds it needs to battle the impact of coronavirus outbreak, Reuters reported on Monday, citing senior officials familiar with the matter.
By contrast according to CNBC the Corona Virus situation continues to deteriorate.
Italy is now the worst-affected country from the coronavirus outside Asia, overtaking Iran in terms of the number of deaths and infections from the virus.
The death toll in Italy jumped to 79 on Tuesday, up from an official total of 52 on Monday. As of Wednesday morning, there are 2,502 cases of the virus in Italy, according to Italian media reports that are updated ahead of the daily official count, published by Italy’s Civil Protection Agency every evening.
Now what about a regular topic the Italian banks? From Axa.
and banks such as Unicredit and Intesa have offered “payment holidays” to some of their affected borrowers.