Comparing the data, it can be seen that all the Italian regions – none excluded – have lost positions in the European ranking. It is not about a few positions, it is about dozens and dozens of positions. Only the autonomous province of Bolzano, which is equated to a region, limits the fall to 6 positions, dropping from eleventh to seventeenth, but this is due to the fact that its per capita income is kept artificially high by the enormous transfers borne by the budget national.
Look at Lombardy which was 14th in Europe and is now 36th, having lost 22 positions. Look at Piedmont, which from 35th to 84th, losing almost 40 positions. And the Veneto that from 31st to 68th? And the Marches that lose 39 positions and Umbria that even loses 70, occupying in the ranking more or less what was the position of Basilicata twenty years ago?
This is not a cyclical crisis, nor is it the result of a series of cyclical crises. It is a process of dramatic deindustrialization that risks setting the country back decades.
Private investment is missing
This is the picture that emerges from Svimez’s data that illustrate a situation that perhaps we prefer not to see. The outbreak of the pandemic in 2020 further aggravated the situation. But today there is a very strong recovery that will certainly continue next year. There is hope in the recovery of these months, provided, however, that it is not a brief flashback followed by a new stagnation. The government’s forecasts are encouraging for this year and 2022, but then announce growth rates of 2% while considering the effects of spending on European funds from the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, or Pnrr. It is too little to begin to climb the slope.
Private investments are still missing, those that, together with the funds of the Marshall Plan, started and fed the Italian economic miracle of the 1950s. Let’s face it frankly, if there is a chance to restart, it depends on the continuity of the current government. It is not certain that it is enough if parties and social forces are not aware of the situation and deceive themselves that they can start conducting themselves again in the way the results are illustrated in the graph and table on this page. But if you stop this experience, it surely goes for the worse.