How are Italian companies doing after a year of pandemic? The photograph taken by Istat is worrying, with almost one out of two companies at risk. The “solidity map” of companies produced by the National Institute of Statistics indicates that “approx 45% of them are structurally at risk”, which means that ”exposed to an exogenous crisis, they would suffer consequences such as to jeopardize their operations”. Not only that, last November “almost a third of companies considered at risk of their own survival, more than 60% expected decreasing revenues and only one in five believed they had not suffered consequences or had benefited from the crisis”.
This is what emerges from 2021 Competitiveness Report of the productive sectors of Istat, which also analyzes the effects of the health crisis on companies.
Among the companies most in danger, the Institute explains in the report, most are active in the low-tech sectors and of knowledge. On the other side,"only 11% is solid, but it explains almost half of employment and over two thirds of the total added value”.
Each sector has reacted to the crisis in a different way. In detail, last year added value fell by 11,1% in industry in the strict sense, by 8,1% in services, by 6,3% in construction and by 6% in agriculture.
As far as the services sector is concerned, the percentages of decline are double-digit: -16% for commerce, transport, hotels and restaurants. Doing even worse, in manufacturing, is the textile, clothing and footwear sector (-23%), followed by machinery and means of transport (-15%). On the other hand, food (+2%) and pharmaceutical (+3,5%) are positive).
The crisis induced by Covid has “produced territorial divisions, also due to the application of the containment measures on a regional basis”, Istat still notes, signaling that all the Regions are affected, but the strongest impact is in the Center-South with Abruzzo, Basilicata, Calabria, Campania and Sardinia for “combined high risk”. The six regions considered at low risk are all in the North: Piedmont, Liguria, Lombardy, Emilia-Romagna, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Autonomous Province of Trento.
