CIVITAVECCHIA – “Thanks to the survey presented by Confcommercio Roma, attention and current affairs have been brought back to a sector that has always been considered Cinderella, secondary, by a large part of politics.
Because it has been known for decades that 80% of the companies in Civitavecchia belonged to the tertiary sector, and that approximately 80% of those employed in the city were in this sector.
That cruise tourism was crucial for the economy and development of the port, maritime, port and transport agencies, and that it left around 80 million a year in this city, but had a limited impact on the tertiary sector, except in some sectors ; it was enough to see the exponential growth of car parks, B&Bs and restaurants.
To ensure that it had an impact on the tertiary economy, perhaps we should have thought, for decades, about shopping itineraries, about cultural tourist itineraries, about forms of promotion of the city, of the territory in relation to cruise tourism, such as to allow the economic crisis of cruise passengers to pass to structural tourist.
Now we are surprised if the sign in the relationship between births and deaths of businesses is negative.
But for decades the desertification of shops has been underestimated, or rather of that “cellular microcapitalism”, which in Civitavecchia has been decisive for decades for the GDP and for the economy.
Tertiary sector, small businesses massacred by online commerce, by media and large-scale distribution, but which have contributed to giving life and identity to a historic center on which it will be necessary and mandatory to intervene.
A port divided from the city, a city with a port that sees three million people arrive and a city that has remained the same from an urban planning point of view.
Here Confcommercio Rome has given a “wake up to politics, it has turned the spotlight on the numbers and importance of this primary sector
As has been the case for years, however, the lights go out after the elections and “cellular microcapitalism” returns to being a shop, an ancillary economic sector, in some cases tolerated, in others simply considered tax evaders.
We can hope for a serious commitment, a real project, awareness of the numbers in this sector, and consequent interventions, in particular by reminding the future mayor that the times of business are different from those of politics: and business, as demonstrated the Confcommercio investigation closes the shutters”
Tullio Nunzi
