“Italy is immersed in the fall in domestic demand: consumption chases and causes the fall in family income; investments remain suspended pending the resolution of doubts about the prospects; the grip of credit reduction is tightening on both”. This is what we read in the latest flash of the Confindustria Study Centre.
“In the absence of a policy that indicates the priorities and the route – continues the CSC -, the risk is that all the players are on the defensive and that the game for the country is negative sum. To unblock the stalemate, clear-cut choices are needed that inject liquidity into the system (payment of PA arrears), restore competitiveness (down labor costs, starting with young people) and set public investment in motion. The only thing that is not needed, indeed must be avoided because it is harmful, is a corrective maneuver: the public accounts are the best in the EU. New orders flow from abroad and this comforts expectations of a recovery in the second half of 2013, anticipated by the leading OECD. The government in office has powers to act in the face of the full-blown emergency of the most serious economic crisis in the history of Italy”.
In the global context, however, “the improvement is consolidating. In the USA, the recovery has strengthened, starting with the labor market and the renewed impetus in both the manufacturing and tertiary sectors; residential construction boosts expansion; the net wealth of households is on the rise. In China, and to a lesser extent in the other major emerging markets, some indicators still bear signs of the slowdown phase, but the acceleration underway is increasingly evident. Japan has left the contraction behind and aims to grow more decisively; the increase in consumer and investor confidence rewards the new course set by premier Abe. The Eurozone continues to retreat and persists in the bad management of consolidation, generating instability (see Cyprus); Germany does better than the average and the gap with the other economies remains wide, not just Piigs anymore: France and the Netherlands are also in difficulty. Even the exemplary Sweden, outside the single currency but very integrated with it, marks time”.
Download the entire report in Pdf:
Attachments: CF March 2013 (1).pdf
