The uncertainty about the fate of the Italian economy, which reached its peak at the beginning of 2012, has decreased somewhat in the forecasts of economists but remains high among entrepreneurs for whom the exit from the crisis is still far away. This is what emerges from an analysis by the Confindustria Study Center on the trend of the range of GDP forecasts for the current year and the following year starting from 2007. From the data, explains the CSC, it emerges that "before the crisis the range it was relatively narrow and with little difference between that of the current period and that of the following period; which denotes a relative certainty on the fact that Italy would have maintained a certain path of progress”. The outbreak of the crisis, then, increased variability, especially at the beginning.
In January 2009, in fact, the range doubled for the current year (1,8 points) while in the following two years, the dispersion remained constant for each forecast two-year period: 1,4 points in January 2010 for both the current is for the following and 1,0 in January 2011 again for both years. Uncertainty has increased again due to the estimates released in January 2012, continues the Study Centre, in the midst of the second recession, especially with reference to 2013, the year for which the gap between the best and worst forecasts even reached 2,3 points and, for the first time, forecasters' assessments ranged between widely positive (+1,2%) and negative (-1,1%) values, with a gap for 2012 (1,4 points) physiologically inferior.
In January 2013 there was a greater agreement in the forecasts on the dynamics of the GDP in 2013, which for all the institutions in the panel was considered to be declining, while in 2014 the variability remained high which, like the previous year, is extended from positive to negative changes. The forecasts available in December 2013 show a decreasing and almost identical dispersion on 2014 (where the negative sign remains alongside the positive one) and on 2015 (positive sign only): 1,0 and 1,1, respectively. ”Conversely, for entrepreneurs – notes Confindustria – the uncertainty about the duration of the crisis rose steadily from 2010 to 2013. The opinion surveys carried out by the Fondazione Nord Est among 1059 companies in fact showed a progressive increase in the share of those who expect the end of the crisis to occur in a time horizon of more than a year and a half: in 2010 it was 34,9%, in 2013 it was 66,6%3. The percentage of those who deem it possible within a year has dropped: from 31,1% to 13,7%. Seen on a purely statistical level, in reality, there is a concentration of answers on the worst case scenario and this denotes the rooting and convergence of assessments on the seriousness of the Italian socio-economic situation”.
”The persistence of the crisis – concludes the analysis – and in particular the second recession led by the collapse of domestic demand, has accentuated uncertainty (but which perhaps would be more appropriate to call pessimism) among entrepreneurs. However, if on the one hand the acknowledgment of the structural figure of the crisis has led to greater prudence in investment choices, on the other it has led companies to pursue new strategies and to undertake alternative development paths in order to survive in a much more difficult context. ' magmatic than in the past”.
