A war scenario. With a collapse in exports, a negative decline in the labor market that has affected above all women and workers with less protection. And then the distance between Sardinia and the more dynamic regions of the EU is growing. The hope to start the recovery can come from the enhancement of human capital, digitization and environmental protection. This is the economic picture of Sardinia traced by the twenty-eighth Crenos report (the North-South Economic Research Center of the Universities of Cagliari and Sassari) and relative to 2020.
Weaknesses and frailties
“The European economic crisis triggered by the disease has highlighted the weaknesses of fragile economies as well as strong ones, giving impetus to a new cohesion in the design of the Union’s economic policies – premieres the study coordinated by Gianfranco Atzeni, professor of Political Economy at the University of Sassari and Crenos researcher -. In some economies, fragilities such as gender and inequalities between generations, territorial differences in the endowment of digital infrastructures and human capital skills have emerged with greater clarity “.
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The collapse during the shooting
The study shows that the health emergency hit Sardinia just as a slight recovery was underway. “Without the pandemic we would have welcomed the growth of the Sardinian GDP in 2019 (+ 1.4%) at the top of the ranking of the Italian regions – writes the report -. However, the average growth of the 2015-2019 period is only 0.3% and the Sardinian GDP is 64% of the European average, placing the island in 147th place out of 240 regions in Europe ”. For the island, the repercussions on GDP, linked to the impact caused by the spread of Covid-19 could be “heavier than those recorded at the national level”.
The labor market collapses
The study highlights significant reductions in the activity rate and the employment rate relative to the 2020 labor market. Specifically, in 2020 the island loses a total of 27,000 employees and 43,000 labor forces, thus placing itself among the regions where the pandemic crisis has had the worst effects on the labor market. Contributing to this negative record is certainly the particular employment structure in Sardinia, which in 2019 saw almost one in four workers employed in the trade or catering sector. “The most affected are women, individuals with medium-low educational qualifications and workers with fixed-term contracts – highlights the report -. The reduced employment of women with a qualification below the diploma is alone responsible for almost half of the overall decrease in employment in Sardinia ».
The distance between Sardinia and the EU is growing
The report points out that “the regional economic system is unable to keep pace with the growth of Europe and over time moves away from the more dynamic regions from an economic point of view”. Furthermore, “the income gap with the northern regions remains: the GDP of Sardinia (33.3 billion euros in volume) translates into 20,356 euros per inhabitant, greater than the South (18,511 euros) but far from the Center-North (33,796 euros ) “. Export and businesses. Despite the forecasts related to the general lockout that suspended or limited many economic activities, the overall number of active companies grew by 1,006 units. “The immediate impact was instead on the flow of registrations and cancellations, which decreased by 15% and 17.3% respectively”. In 2020 there is a drastic reduction in exports, -40.6% compared to 2019. Foreign sales of petroleum products are affected by the collapse of the international price of oil and are reduced to 2.4 billion euros in 2020 (- 48.2%). The remaining sectors, on average down by 4.7%, show a certain variability: “the metal products industry reaches 276 million euros and marks a significant + 46%, while there is a decline in sales of basic chemical industry (188 million, -26.3% compared to 2019) “. The export of the dairy industry is down by 2.7% but sales to the United States, the main destination of pecorino romano, have remained substantially unchanged.