There has been no reversal of conditions on the domestic market for agricultural machinery where the first half of the year was still displaying a trend in the red. Statistics covering the January-June period, elaborated by FederUnacoma on the basis of registration data provided by the Ministry of Transport, signaled a 3% drop for tractors, with 10,267 units registered compared to 10,589 in the same period in 2012, transporters off 19%, with 528 units reported against 651 in the same period in 2012, and trailers dropping 7.6%, with 4.756 units sold compared to 5.147 in the year before. The only figure bucking the trend was for combines, up 24%, a gain of little significance however because of the small number of units involved, 231 machines against 186 in the first half of 2012.

A look at the data for the individual regions shows outstanding exceptions such as the climb in registrations in Emilia Romagna, up 15%, in Lazio, ahead 12.7%, Lombardy gaining 4.5% and Puglia plus 23%. The general trend however remains highly critical and a further downturn in the national average is certain to worsen already grim conditions. In the five years from 2008 through 2012 sales of tractors fell overall by 29%, combine harvesters sales dropped 38.3%, transporters declined by 46.5% and trailer sales were off by 18.6%

FederUnacoma President Massimo Goldoni commented, “The scant profitability of farming enterprises is linked to the weakness of the national system with difficult access to credit and the lack of incentive measures and this means there is not much hope for the recovery of the market in the second half of the year.” Speaking at the FederUnacoma general assembly on June 20th which returned him to the federation presidency for a term running until June 2016, Goldoni added, “We have a lot of work to do in political quarters for studying forms of efficient financing, especially for developing a support policy for agriculture which finally unites professional farmers´ associations, representatives from the agro-industry sector and the federation of machinery and equipment manufacturers in a shared strategy.”

Source: Press Office FederUnacoma