SVIMEZ-Study Center of the G. Tagliacarne Chambers of Commerce survey
73.200 Italian companies with between 5 and 499 employees, 15% of the total, of which almost 20 thousand in the South (19.900) and 17.500 in the Center, are at high risk of expulsion from the market. Of these, an almost double share concerns service companies (17%), compared to manufacturing (9%). They are those that have great difficulty in "resisting" the selection made by Covid as a result of a structural fragility due to the absence of innovation (of product, process, organization, marketing), of digitization and export, and of an economic performance forecast. negative in 2021.
The evaluations are the result of a joint SVIMEZ-Study Center of the Guglielmo Tagliacarne-Unioncamere Chambers of Commerce research, conducted on a sample of 4 thousand manufacturing and service companies between 5 and 499 employees. SVIMEZ and Centro Studi Tagliacarne have signed a collaboration agreement on some strategic lines of activity to formulate indications and suggestions for the territorial development policies of the South and for areas with development problems.
"The survey shows, in addition to a marked differentiation between North East and North West, also the fragility of a Center that is increasingly crushing on the values of the Southern regions - comments the Director of SVIMEZ, Luca Bianchi - The different sectoral impacts, with the particular fragility of some service sectors, after the first phase of refreshments for all, require a new phase of specific safeguarding interventions for the sectors in greatest difficulty, accompanied by specific initiatives to increase digitization, innovation and export capacity of companies in the Center-South ".
Gaetano Fausto Esposito, general manager of the Study Center of the G. Tagliacarne Chambers of Commerce, warns "it is possible that companies in the South can achieve even more negative results this year than their expectations, because they are less aware of their own delays accumulated on the issues of innovation and digital. For this too, there is a need for a pact for a new development that takes into account the gravity of the situation and the worrying increase in gaps in our country ”.
Almost half (48%) of Italian companies are fragile (non-innovative, non-digitized and non-exporting). They reach 55% in the South, almost 50% in the Center, 46% and 41% in the North-West and North-East respectively. These differences confirm the SVIMEZ thesis of “new issue of the Center”, which has an impact closer to that of the South. The incidence is even more intense in the service sector, where the innovation and digitization deficits mean that fragile companies exceed 50% at national level, almost 60% in the South. In the manufacturing sector, 31% are fragile in Italy. of companies, which rise to 39% in the South.
30% of service companies and 22% of Italian manufacturing companies declare lower turnover expectations also in 2021, a clear sign that the crisis is not over at all. By crossing sectoral and territorial dynamics, two main facts emerge: 1) in services there are no appreciable territorial differentials and a persistence of the crisis, especially in the North-West 2) in manufacturing, on the other hand, the difficulties of recovery in the South are confirmed (27% of companies with negative performance forecasts, compared to 19% in the North-East) and, albeit less accentuated, in the Center (25%).
