An important day of in-depth study was held this morning in Confcommercio, on the topic of strategic planning together with the administrators and municipal delegations of the Province.
It was an opportunity to present the Memorandum of Understanding between operators and Municipalities drawn up by Confcommercio following a phase of listening to local operators and aimed at revising the Strategic Trade Plans, through the introduction of guidelines on the protection and encouraging small neighborhood businesses.
“Over the last ten years, the Province of Taranto has lost over 8000 businesses in the trade sector, with a constant increase in closures and a decrease in activations. A trend which, unfortunately, is confirmed in the first projections for the first quarter of 2024 which records a negative balance with 956 terminations and 775 registrations. A fact that risks wiping out an entire system, that of small neighborhood businesses, which is an element of sociality as well as the economic stability of the territory and negatively influencing the tourism development we are experiencing. In second place among the travel motivations of international tourists is precisely the beauty of the characteristic villages, among whose characterizing elements, the neighborhood shops, especially the historic ones, represent a fundamental garrison that enriches and identifies our historic centers.
The commercial planning document can take on a new function to give impetus to the new administrative programmatic directions in the field of commerce for the purpose of re-functionalizing public and private spaces dedicated to commerce, to respond to the new standards expected by the market and, at the same time, combat the phenomenon of commercial desertification with targeted measures and effective tools such as the Urban Trade Districts.
These are issues that have been on the agenda of Confcommercio for some time, which at the beginning of the year set up a crisis table which started a phase of listening to the base, recording the unanimous desire to strengthen that public-private pact, of which the Strategic Document of Commerce represents the most important synthesis tool.
Today – says director Tullio Mancino – we met the administrators of the Municipalities of the Province of Taranto, to whom we presented a Memorandum of Understanding aimed at activating measures to combat commercial desertification that are integrated into the Strategic Plan of Municipal Commerce, also proposing to support them with our technical structure for related administrative procedures.”
