Although the global financial crisis has forced many institutions to cut the expenses and reduce investment, the enthusiasm of ICE keeps on. Maurizio Forte, the chief representative of ICE in Shanghai has expressed recently that ICE will continue to participate in CIFIT this year, and it is the fifth time for ICE to attend CIFIT.
“Although the global economy and the overall trade are in depression, the economic relationship between China and Italy maintains good momentum of development. Both Chinese market share in Italy and Italian market share in China show the sign of increase,” said Maurizio Forte yesterday.
Data from Chinese Customs and MOFCOM also verified Maurizio Forte’s view. According to the statistics of Chinese General Administration of Customs, Italy ranked the third exported country for China in EU, following Germany and France, and the export volume reached 11.66 billion dollars with an increase of 14%. Meanwhile, Italy was the fourth biggest imported country for China in EU. Last year the import turnover of Italy from China increased by 25.64%, and that was 26.6 billion dollars. Also the statistics from MOFCOM showed that in 2008 Italian FDI to China reached 0.493 billion dollars with an increase of 41.77%.
However, Maurizio Forte also admitted that as the global economy was still in recovery in the first half of 2009, trade between China and Italy was affected. Data of the this period showed that while the total
Chinese imported turnover was decreased by 25%, the exported volume of Italy to China still remains at 5.25 billion dollars with only a small decrease of 9.8%. The imported turnover of Italy to China in the first half of 2009 was 9.5 billion dollars with a fall of 23.8% comparing with last year. “This situation means that China is an attractive market for Italy to develop trade.”
Maurizio Forte said, “I hope the outlook concerning trade between China and Italy in 2009 will be as promising as that in 2008, or at least the decrease in both imported turnover and exported volume in the second half of 2009 can be alleviated.”
He expressed that Italy was going to promote investment opportunities in fields like logistics and life science, especially biological medical technology, information and communication technology, renewable energy resources and tourism.
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