A South increasingly in crisis and light years away from the regions of the Centre-North. This the photograph of the South taken by Svimez in the 2019 report published today, November 4th.
A difficult reality that translates into gloomy GDP forecasts. According to the institute's scholars, in fact, the Italian Gross Domestic Product will grow by +0,9% in 2018, +0,2% in 2019 and +0,6% in 2020. The increase is driven by the Centre-North where there is a growth of +0,9% in 2018, +0,3% in 2019, +0,7% in 2020. On the other hand, the estimates for Southern Italy are different: +0,6% in 2018, -0,2 % in 2019 and +0,2% in 2020. So this year for the Mezzogiorno it will be stagnation, while growth will be "very modest even in the most developed areas of the country", comments Svimez.
In parallel the employment gap between the South and the Centre-North in the last 10 years has risen from 19,6% to 21,6%: “this implies that the jobs to be created to reach the levels of the Centre-North are around 3 million”, reads the report. Not only that, "The growth in employment in the first half of 2019 concerns only the Centre-North (+137.000), which is contrasted by the decline in the South (-27.000)", it is underlined.
The bad news doesn't end there. “Since the beginning of the new centuryo 2 million and 15 thousand residents have left the South, half of them young people up to 34 years of age, almost a fifth graduates”. The risk at this point is that of running into a real "demographic trap", exaggerated also by the low birth rate. In fact, in Italy in 2018 "a new historic low in births" was reached, he recalls, underlining that around 157 children were born in the South, 6 fewer than in 2017. The novelty, he explains, is "that the contribution guaranteed by foreign women is no longer enough to compensate for the low propensity of Italians to have children".
To solve, at least in part, all the problems listed above, he would have had to think about it citizenship income launched by the Lega-M5S government. And instead according to the Svimez 2019 report, the flagship measure of the 5 Star Movement has a "zero impact on the labor market as the measure, instead of attracting people looking for employment, is driving them away from the labor market". In detail, the institute "deems the citizen's income useful", but underlines that "poverty cannot be fought only with a monetary contribution", but by redefining and strengthening welfare policies and extending citizenship rights to all equally.
To try to lift the south out of a seemingly endless crisis, Svimez invokes "an extraordinary plan for the Mezzogiorno” double track: new investments on the one hand, enhancement of resources already available on the other.
“Too many delays have accumulated in the implementation of the current 2014-2020 cycle”, Svimez denounces, noting that “payments in the South have so far amounted to just 19,78% of the total. The monitored expenditure of the Cohesion Development Fund, which brings together the additional national financial resources intended for economic and social rebalancing, amounted to only 30 billion as at 2019 June 37,6, of which only 1 billion actually paid. This demonstrates a clear incapacity of central, regional and local administrations to make full use of resources”.
It would also be appropriate, analysts say, to try to develop new production sectors as much as possible, such as the bioeconomy, which today is already worth between 50 and 60 billion euros in the South alone. “In the South – reads the Report – the growth of renewable energy sources is significant. Among the various sectors of the circular economy present in the South, green chemistry takes on particular importance. From the South there is a strong demand for patents in the bioeconomy sector. Biotech companies have grown a lot in the southern areas, +61,1%, compared to +34,5% on a national scale".
“It is the x-ray of a deep fracture, neglected in decades of public disinvestment in the South which, with social suffering and the production decline in the area, have produced a weakening of Italy in the European scenario and the breakdown of the demographic balance. With Italy having stopped in the first months of 2019, today Svimez confirms what I feared a few weeks ago when I took office, the heavy legacy of a South that entered a recession". This is the comment of the minister for the South and territorial cohesion, Peppe Provenzano. "But these analyzes - he continues - must not lead to discouragement, they must lead to an even greater commitment that must involve the entire government, to a shared urgency."
