The global economic recovery is going better than expected, and this time Italy is hooking up to it. Indeed, according to the 99th Industry Sector Analysis Report of Intesa Sanpaolo and Prometeia, Italian industry is reacting in a particularly virtuous way, in line with or even better than its European partners. To the point that pre-Covid levels will be recovered in less than a year, at the beginning of 2022, and that according to the estimates of the bank's economists, by the end of 2022 the total turnover of our manufacturing system will exceed the threshold of 1.000 billion euro, i.e. about seventy billion more than the 2019 score. It will be another milestone, like the one in 2019 when for the first time the Italian trade balance had exceeded the 100 billion bar, the beauty of 70 billion more than the 2010 balance.
Precisely this last figure gives an idea of the level of solidity to which Italian industry had reached before the Covid crisis, and which allowed it to face it and come out with far fewer scars than the 2009 crisis. The industry has gotten much stronger in the last decade – he explained in a streaming conference the chief economist of Intesa Sanpaolo, Gregorio De Felice -, driven by a nucleus of highly specialized companies. So it is facing the crisis with solid structures, achieving a more lively recovery than in France and Germany”. According to De Felice, Italy is therefore playing its part in a context in which “the world economy has taken a turn, and the recovery will be faster than expected. In 2021, global GDP will grow by 3,5% thanks above all to the USA, which has put in place a recovery plan worth 4.000 billion in total, and China, while for the Eurozone the decisive quarter will be the summer one, the third”.
Returning to Italian industry, the comparison between the crisis of 2009 and that caused by Covid has no possible comparison: twelve years ago we lost almost 17% of turnover, ie 183 billion at current prices, while last year our manufacturing lost 9,3%, in absolute values 88 billion. However, all sectors went into the red, apart from pharmaceuticals: the worst was fashion, which fell by 21,6%. “The most penalized sectors – confirmed Alessandra Benedini of Prometeia – were evidently those linked to sociality, which was lacking. So fashion, but also food, above all the Ho.Re.Ca sector (catering and hotels, ed), precisely because it was not possible to travel and go out to eat as before". However, Italian industry is solid, as mentioned, and does not even suffer from dwarfism as before: companies with a turnover of more than 50 million euros have gone from 45 to 53% in 10 years, as has exports which from 36 % of 2010 moved to 48% of 2019.
This time however, underlines the study by Intesa Sanpaolo and Prometeia, it won't be so much exports that will drive the recovery, but rather domestic demand, which will once again play a predominant role in growth, as it has not done since the 2014-2018 period. The other big news will be the increase in the weight of the high tech sectors and linked to the green economy: a signal has already been seen on patents, which now see Italy practically in line with the European average (+8,4% against +8,8%), thanks above all – precisely – the boom in green technology patents (over +10%). The result is that already in 2021 Italian industry will rebound by 8,4% and that in the period 2021-2025 it will do so by 4,2% CAGR. And this despite a major absence: public investment. From 2010 to 2020, private investments in Italian industry grew by 3,4%, but public investments disappeared: -17,4%. This will also help the PNRR, which dedicates a large part of the planned expenditure to investment in infrastructure.
