ITALIAN COMPANIES: NORTH-EAST AT A TURNING POINT, DISAPPOINTING 2002

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ITALIAN COMPANIES: NORTH-EAST AT A TURNING POINT, DISAPPOINTING 2002

AGI, July 10, 2003

(AGI) - Venice, Italy, July 10 - The North-east as an economic phenomenon is over. However, we're not faced with the death of an era, but we are witnessing the passage from one system to another, which has uncertain borders.

The announcement came this morning in Venice from the North- east Foundation, which presented the long awaited report on the economy in 2003 in Palazzo Labia. The report, by Daniele Marini, director of the foundation, was pitiless on one side, and full of advice for the future.

Last year was one of the worst in the last 50 years for the area. The regional gross product grew only by 0.3 percent (the figure was worst only in 1973 and 1983), the per capita income decreased by 0.2 percent. For the first time in ten years, the current value of exports decreased, internal demand (family consumer spending and investments) increased only by 0.8 percent, production had a decrease of 0.2 percent, industry registered a decrease of added value of 0.9 percent.

Faced with an economic standstill, the Veneto is seeing an increasingly older population that can be balanced by the constant presence of immigrants. Currently in Veneto, Friuli Venezia Giulia and Trent, there are 340,000 resident immigrants, equalling five percent of the total population: there are 200,000 more than four years ago. Not counting immigrants, the working population (20-49 years of age) will decrease by one million in twenty years, and the number of eighty year olds will double in 24 years. Thus, 5000 new immigrant workers will be needed every year.

   The only positive figure in this panorama is employment, which increased 1.5 percent in 2002.

   If one side of the North-east is in decline, another is slowly emerging. In the 2003 report, negative tones are not the only ones.

   The first signs of a transformation are already being seen, as observed Daniele Marini in his report. If in the Veneto the elderly population is growing, the young are more qualified and more educated, the activity rate remains higher than the national average and is near the European rate, company invest more and more in equipment and technology.

The report gives some advice for the future: policies will need to be activated in order to better use families and immigrants, to develop the labour market and training. The report also invites small and medium companies to pool their resources, which would be a "cultural leap," said Marini.

And it is exactly this cultural leap that will allow the companies to win the challenge of internationalisation. "This system, characterised by small and medium businesses, evidently has a limit in this challenge of internationalisation.

A limit that can be exceeded in time thanks to an increase in business imensions, which will also come through business merger and fusion systems," observed Innocenzo Cipolletta in a chapter of the report. (AGI)