“It is the whole of Italy that has started, and not from today, on a path of economic decline. A decline that the global crisis has certainly accelerated, but which had already begun ten years earlier and had not even spared the Centre-North. As evidenced by the data contained in the report that Svimez presented in Naples in recent days: dramatic figures not only for a weak area such as the South, but for the country as a whole".
Adriano Giannola – a long-time southerner (born in the Marches, graduated in Economics in Bologna, specialized in Economics of the development of the South at the Manlio Rossi Doria Center in Portici), is a professor of Banking Economics at the Federico II University, president of the Banco di Naples and for almost three years president of Svimez – in this interview with FIRSTonline he doesn't give anyone any discounts when he speaks of national economic decline and foresees the risk of industrial desertification for Italy.
FIRSTonline – President, you speak of a national decline that also involves our northern regions. But weren't these considered the locomotive of Italy?
Giannola - And they have been for a long time, in a past that is now distant. But it has been since 1998 that the decline of the North has taken on very worrying characteristics, as demonstrated by the data that Svimez highlighted in the study presented in Naples. Since that year, practically the most prosperous Italy has stopped growing. And, when the world crisis exploded in 2008, many lulled themselves into the illusion that the slowdown in the North depended on this external cause.
FIRSTonline – So what were the causes of the decline of the North? It is not that among these there is also the "weight" of the "wasteful" Mezzogiorno
Giannola – No, that is a fairy tale from which the illusion of a North that could have grown much more without the "ball and chain" of the South was born. The decline, on the other hand, is the result of the "inattention" of a political class which for at least fifteen years was unable or unwilling to modernize the country, effectively renounced a national industrial policy, abandoned the southern regions to a destiny of marginality. And that continues to fuel a sort of demographic "tsunami" that is depriving the South of its most youthful and vital energies.
FIRSTonline – What consequences has the renunciation of strong choices in terms of industrial policy determined?
Giannola – Italian industry as a whole produces less, the productivity rate is reduced, the labor cost per unit of product is the lowest in Europe, energy costs our companies 30% more than in the rest of the world continent, the level of household consumption has contracted. And, last but not least, the unemployment rate, especially among young people and women, continues to grow: between 2008 and 2012, 506.000 jobs were lost in Italy; and, of these, 301.000 went up in smoke in the South, the area where the level of employment was already the lowest. The decline is authentic and generalized, in the North and in the South. And the country is struggling to get out of the recession.
FIRSTonline – President, in Naples you spoke about the manufacturing crisis, the traditional backbone of Italian industry…
Giannola – I underlined that over the decade 2000-2010 the share of this sector on the total added value fell in Italy from 19% to 16,6%: percentages that make up the average between the South (where it fell from 11,2, 9,4% to 21,5%) and the Centre-North (here the reduction slipped from 18,8% to XNUMX%, further confirmation of the fact that the substantial economic stalemate throughout the country started well before the beginning of the global crisis).
FIRST online – Among the data that Svimez has obtained from the elaboration of Italian and European statistics, which others testify to this substantial uniformity of economic backwardness of the Italian regions?
Giannola – Those contained in the ranking of European regions in terms of GDP per capita, where we learn that between 2000 and 2007 (therefore before the explosion of the global financial crisis) Lombardy slipped from 17th to 29th place, the Emilia-Romagna from 19th to 44th, Veneto from 28th to 55th, Piedmont from 40th to 84th. While in some regions of the South, in any case already in the lower part of the rankings, the slide has been more controlled.
FIRST online – President, in such a messy and worrying context, what therapies can be indicated so that growth can restart?
Giannola – First of all an emergency intervention to deal with the social emergency, which in the South is much more acute than in the rest of Italy. And also at least launch a medium-long term strategy focused on a few basic factors to kick-start development: first of all a strong industrial and energy policy, which can no longer be based on the model of districts, an important model but which alone cannot can support a country of 60 million inhabitants on world markets. And also logistics and territorial supply chains, advantageous taxation, intervention on Irap. In short, a new development strategy that should start right from the weakest part of Italy, and then extend to the entire country.
