Italian export credit agency (ECA) Sace has revealed the scale of the losses incurred by Italian exporters due to the Russian sanctions.

“We have already suffered damage for 2014-2015 for the sum of €2.5-3bn,” said Sace CEO Giovanni Castellaneta at the Eurasian Economic Forum in Verona last week.

Last year, Sace estimated the loss of Italian exports to Russia would range between €1.8bn to €3bn during 2014-2015. The current losses measured by the ECA are already weighting towards the upper end of the scale.

Sace’s support for Italian business in Russia remains robust, with Castellaneta pointing out that only recently the agency had granted loans worth €4bn to Russian companies.

Italy is Russia’s second biggest European trade partner after Germany. Germany has also seen a steady decrease in exports to Russia, which fell by 18% to €29bn in 2014.

In a recent study, the Austrian Institute of Economic Research (WIFO) has also estimated a decline of exports over the last quarter of 2014 and the first quarter of 2015 worth €30bn for the 27 European Union countries and Switzerland, equivalent to a decline of almost 25% compared to the previous year.