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Mezzogiorno: Ahead of the Center-North, but it won't last. All the numbers from the 2024 Svimez Report

Svimez Report in chiaroscuro. 2024 was good, but 2025 will be gloomy again. Investing in strategic sectors and improving cohesion policy becomes essential

Mezzogiorno: Ahead of the Center-North, but it won't last. All the numbers from the 2024 Svimez Report


It is only a +0,9%, but it reassures the economy of the South. Let's say it right away: for now. For the second consecutive year the Southern Regions are doing better than those of the Center-North which reach +0,7%. Svimez report 2024 presented in Rome is a historical indicator of current trends and this year reveals that in the South constructions have been fundamental in obtaining that percentage of +0,9%. But it is a "South lends itself to a convenient symbol of the success of the government strategy that relaunches it as a Single ZES" said the President of Svimez, Adriano Giannola. The public spending with the funds of the PNRR it has been a constant driving force throughout 2024. But be careful, we are facing a meteor effect, because from 2025 the South will start growing less than the Centre-North (+0,7% against +1,0%) and so also in 2026. The general manager Luca Bianchi he was very clear on the point. After all, what happened to the income of southern families this year? It halved: +2,3% in 2024 against +4,5% in 2023.

Three million underutilized workers

In the three-year period 2024-2026 the Pnrr investments from Rome down, however, they are worth 1,8 percentage points of GDP against 1,6 points in the Center-North. In one year, the number of employed people has grown by 330 thousand units and in the last three years, employment has returned to the levels, never recovered until 2019, of mid-2008. But there are still 3 million underutilized or unutilized workers. Precariousness is a phenomenon that is far from marginal compared to other European economies. In this, old behaviors persist, very perceptible in everyday life, such as the circumstance that "more than one worker in five is hired on fixed-term contracts". The scenario is changeable due to the usual sum of environmental, political and cultural factors. There are areas in which we need to invest if we want to improve: the protection of the territory, the environment, healthcare, infrastructures that the Svimez numbers allow us to glimpse. In the face of this, there are pockets of poverty that survive investment policies. “In the South – says the Report – 60% of the 2,3 million poor Italian workers which are approximately 1,4 million.

Differentiated autonomy to do what?

“The positive trend in employment has not prevented the increase in families with a reference person employed in absolute poverty”. What does this mean? That the “I have a family” is supported by people who adapt to jobs of all kinds. A depressing context, aggravated by the Brain drain. In this case, the numbers become the other side of a smeared coin. In the last 10 years, almost 200 young graduates have left the South for the Center-North. Do we divide the country and make the South-North journey faster? What can come from the differentiated autonomy project? Little or nothing. The government has created the single Zes. "Drawing on the idea that the single Zes can work miracles, with or without tax relief, and with abundant resources for tax credit, is a dangerous diversion," said Giannola. The idea of ​​differentiated autonomy is, to say the least, disturbing compared to the real needs of millions of people. On the industrial level, the South "is not an industrial desert." Svimez says that there are sectors where even today the weight of the South is significant: agro-industry, naval and shipbuilding, aerospace, construction and automotive. All right, let those who want to put their own money in come forward, as long as the State does not hinder them in a thousand ways. In the automotive sector, for example, a European challenge is being played out connected to the extraordinary scenarios of electric and sustainable mobility. Those vehicles with all the trimmings for the South are worth 13 billion euros. Why was the 2 billion investment for the battery gigafactory in Termoli suspended? The problem of capital returns in a highly strategic area. The PNRR funds? They are there, but the machine is slow. Svimez puts forward the proposal of a PNRR method "adapted to cohesion policies, which subordinates the disbursement of resources to the achievement of specific objectives". Because, in the end, "the night passes".

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