We wrote it already in 1995. Why not take a lesson from the example offered by Germany in recent years? Because if our German friends have managed to make the process of unification with the former GDR the backbone of every economic and social policy, we cannot do the same with our South? Is it unreasonable to think that investing resources, ideas and energy in the South can ultimately translate into an advantage for the entire country as well? Thus the president of theEurispes, Gian Maria Fara on the institutional website of the institute.
The president states: "We reiterated this belief in the edition of the Italy 2020 Report ″. A concept, among other things, today taken up by scholars such as Isaiah Sales.
Germany, Fara points out, already in the first decades of reunification, spent in the poorer former East Germany a figure five times higher than what the reviled Cassa per il Mezzogiorno cost in fifty years.
Moreover, despite what is commonly believed, the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno absorbed just 0,5% of the Italian GDP (or in any case never more than 0,7%), while at the same time public investments in the North amounted to 3,5% of GDP. Nevertheless, a good part of that same 0,5% also ended up in the North, thanks to the phenomenon of "rigged contracts" entrusted to industries in the North for the construction of extremely expensive works, often useless and / or never made operational ( famous "cathedrals in the desert").
The International Monetary Fund has calculated that the companies that benefited from the financing of the last period of the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno, for 80%, were large companies from the North.
Bank of Italy instead calculates that an increase of only one euro in GDP in the South produces a growth of 40 cents of GDP in the Center-North. However, the reverse does not happen: that is, the increase in GDP by one euro in the Center-North determines a growth for the entire country of only 10 cents. Therefore, investing in the growth of the South rather than that of the Center-North entails a gain for the entire country four times greater. But, unfortunately, our ruling classes seem to ignore it.
If Italy, therefore, overcomes its myopic illusions of being able to proceed in semi-separate pieces, returning to consider itself a country and thus also developing the South, it would become the most competitive area in Europe and perhaps able to compete with the most competitive areas in the world.
Germany carried out a similar operation, proving that backwardness it is not a destiny for a territory (nor an anthropological fact), but it is a condition that can be overcome in a few decades through massive investments. This would also be possible in Italy if only our country became fully aware of being one and the same.
Bank of Italy studies show that the South is Italy's true reserve of growth: that is, it constitutes the part of potential growth. Therefore, if the country comes to discover the value of this immense treasure hidden in the South, it would enjoy unprecedented momentum.