Foreign trade and payments.

The article presents information about the foreign trade of Italy. In the January-July period of 2005 Italy recorded a foreign-trade deficit of €4.4bn, compared with a deficit of €700m in the year-earlier period. According to provisional balance-of-payments data for the second quarter of 2005 from Banca d'Italia the current-account deficit widened to €9.2bn compared with a deficit of €5.9bn in the same period of 2004, mainly reflecting sharp deteriorations in the merchandise trade and services balances.