The medium-sized companies operating in the South are few in number but from the point of view of profitability, they do not differ much from those of the other regions, indeed in some cases they have better results. The sixth Report on industrial enterprises in the South edited by Ugo La Malfa Foundation and Mediobanca, was illustrated by Giorgio La Malfa and Paolo Savona and commented by the president of Confindustria Vincenzo Boccia and the Minister of Development Carlo Calenda.
The report takes into consideration the accounting data of the companies and from their examination, unique in the panorama of economic analyzes on the southern situation, some very interesting considerations can be deduced for establishing the most suitable policies to accelerate the development of this vast area of our country without whose participation it is impossible for the whole of Italy to reach levels of growth comparable to those of other western countries.
In a nutshell, the data highlight that medium-sized enterprises (those which in our country represent the backbone of industry) are few in relation to the population, but which have faced the long crisis that began in 2008 more or less like those of the rest of Italy and which have now reached levels of profitability comparable to that of the country, although productivity remains significantly lower.
From this analysis, as he effectively highlighted Paul Savona, it can be deduced that a first shortage of southern companies is insufficient investment and the way they are managed ie scarce organizational innovations which in many other cases have proved to be decisive for obtaining substantial increases in productivity. Furthermore and perhaps above all, the causes of the lack of growth of companies in the South must be sought in factors external to the factory which condition it in various ways: from transport, the inefficiency of the public administration, justice, security and finally the modest opening of the markets to competition. Furthermore, Savona recalled, it is the current crisis in the construction industry (little studied so far) which helps to slow down the take-off of the southern regions.
George La Malfa he underlined that the Report gives as an indication for the economic policies to be followed, that of focusing on the medium industry which is proving to be not numerous but vital, and that to do so it is above all necessary to remove the environmental obstacles which prevent a stronger flourishing of southern entrepreneurs or the arrival of investments from other areas of the country. For La Malfa it is necessary clearing the forest of incentives that are difficult to understand and therefore not very effective and focus on the relaunch of the industrial development areas in order to enable entrepreneurs to have a single interlocutor for the authorizations and services necessary for the construction of a new industrial plant.
These theses have been widely shared by both Boccia that by Minister Calenda. In particular, Boccia recalled how in 2010 there were as many as 200 business facilitation instruments. A jungle in which it was difficult to move and which in fact did not give appreciable results. Now resources are concentrated only on the tax credit for investments. A measure, as Calenda explained, that is the same for all of Italy but increased in the South by over 30% and can be combined with super-depreciation and job relief. As far as the ASIs are concerned, Calenda explained that they already exist but that they are managed by the Regions and therefore that the central government has very few possibilities for intervention. In fact, plans are being made to offer the Regions the possibility of voluntarily handing them over to the Government of Rome, thus cleaning them of all the clientelistic encrustations that have currently reduced them to completely useless and expensive entities. We touch here in practice one of the deleterious consequences of the victory of the NO in the referendum of 4 December. And in general it is clear how the main problem that holds back the South, but which also hinders the rest of Italy, is precisely the political-administrative mismanagement which depends on a confused and baroque institutional set-up. This is the armor that imprisons our country and prevents it from moving as it should and could.
