With economic sentiment waning in the Eurozone, companies are concerned about doing business in the coming months. Even the champion of exports, the metallurgical and metalworking industry, which had “the best semester ever” on foreign markets, with a growth of 11.6% to more than 12.8 billion euros, assumes that the rest of the year is likely to bring some delay. In the textile and clothing industry, there are already companies that are resorting to layoffs and collective redundancies. In footwear, exports are still in positive territory, but some are already calling for government support to “avoid mass layoffs.”
After ending 2022 with a record high in exports, above 23 billion euros, thanks to an accumulated growth of 16.1%, the metallurgy and metalworking industry admits that 2023 should be a new record year. Even though, sales abroad should start to slow in the coming months and eventually fall to double digits in the first half of the year. “We will grow, we think, but with much smaller year-on-year increases,” says the vice-president of AIMMAP, highlighting the difficulties already felt by the subsectors more linked to consumption, such as metal manufacturers crockery, cutlery, etc., but also lower demand from the automotive cluster, namely the German one, for which Portuguese foundry factories make technical parts.
Source: DN
