During the term of Italian Prime Minister Giorgi Meloni, production in the country fell by 7%, according to data from Italian ministries and the statistical office.
The politician took office in October 2022, becoming the first woman in the country's history to hold this position. She promised to strengthen industry and guarantee food sovereignty. Meloni also called for the implementation of a “Made in Italy“ strategy to promote Italian products on world markets.
In the three quarters before she came to power, Italy's GDP grew by an average of 4.6% per quarter. Then, this rate slowed to a more modest one to 3%, and then fell below 1%. Over the past nine quarters, the economy has grown at an average rate of 0.5%.
Italy has not experienced such a prolonged period of weak economic growth in the past 25 years, although during the eurozone debt crisis, the country's GDP grew at a rate of up to one percent between the third quarter of 2011 and the third quarter of 2015.
The slowdown is partly due to a decline in the country's industrial production. The contribution of this sector to the Italian economy has also begun to decline under the current prime minister, although it had previously shown steady growth from 2014 to 2022 (with the exception of the pandemic-hit 2020).
Under Meloni, industry lost 1.6 percentage points of the economy – its share by the end of 2024 fell from 23.3% to 21.7% by the end of 2022.