ITALY DATA: Confidence Improves In May, But Too Early To Call An Uptrend

• Private sector lending growth continued its steady acceleration in March, rising two tenths to 2.6% Y/Y or three tenths to 2.0% Y/Y when adjusting for sales & securitisations (highest since Jun 2023)
• Adjusting for sales & securitisations, lending growth to both non-financial corporates (NFCs) and households accelerated two tenths to 2.3% Y/Y (highest since Jul 2023) and 1.7% Y/Y (highest since Jun 2023) respectively.
• Spain leads lending growth to households (2.6% Y/Y) with France lagging (0.7% Y/Y), although France leads NFC growth (3.1% Y/Y) whilst Italy is the only country still contracting (-0.9% Y/Y but from -4.0% Y/Y as recently as July).
• The Eurozone credit impulse metric of 3mth flows vs 3mths a year ago has broadly plateaued so far in 2025, at around 2% GDP after a large swing from the -5 to -6% GDP seen in mid-2023 when credit growth started to slow abruptly - see top right chart.
• On this relative impulse basis, Spain leads (3.4% GDP), followed by Italy (2.5%), France (1.2%) and Germany (0.6%).
• Separately, Eurozone M3 money supply surprisingly eased to 3.6% Y/Y (cons 4.0) from a downward revised 3.9% (initial 4.0) for its softest since Dec. For rough context, it averaged 5.0% Y/Y through 2019. 

Bloomberg headlines report that France is considering "small-parcel fees as flows from China surge".

• Note that there is concern in Europe about small value imports flooding the markets due to the US' imposition of tariffs on "de minimis" goods.
• Previously goods under USD800 imported via the postal network could be imported to the US tariff-free. That is due to end on 2 May for goods from China and Hong Kong (it's a separate but related announcement to the reciprocal tariffs).
• These headlines are one of the first real acknowledgements of how other countries will potentially be looking to deal with goods that are "dumped" in other countries due to not being viable to export to the US any more.