On the consumption front, Italy is still far from recovery: it will take more than 11 years to return to pre-crisis levels. This is what emerges from the latest analysis by the Confcommercio research office, which forecasts for this year a minimum growth of +0,1%, followed by +0,7% in 2015, when, however, no it will go beyond 12.160 euros per capita, a level even lower than 20 years ago (12.195 euros).
According to analysts of the association, this year the GDP will increase by 0,5%, while next year it will be +0,9%. “Confidence is growing – reads the report –, but consumption and investments show the other face of the country, that of a dramatically stagnant real economy”. Furthermore, between 2007 and 2013, per capita GDP fell by more than 3.100 euros, and no significant recovery is expected until 2015.
As for commercial and service activities, according to Confcommercio, 2014 disappeared in the first quarter of 12 alone, 80% of which in non-food sectors, especially clothing.
Narrowing its gaze to the South, the association notes that development policies based on industrialization have failed, "considering the per capita income gap that still separates the South from the North", therefore "we need to focus on something else, that is on that vocation natural to the export of the South which is called tourism”.
The study states that 44,3% of foreign tourists have the North-East as their destination and only 13,2% choose the regions of the South: "The supply chain of the tourism and hospitality sector should be strengthened by adopting, in a positive sense, those logics that are typical of industrial efficiency, so as to achieve those comparative advantages also in the tourism sector, in terms of greater productivity, which would allow this segment to transform itself into an authentic engine of development. The artistic-cultural, environmental and eno-gastronomic capital of the South is seriously underutilized”.
