The significant upward revisions made by Svimez on the 2022 growth of the GDP of the Campania (+6.1% compared to the first Istat estimate of 4.5%) and Puglia (+5.3% compared to +5% Istat) give a profoundly different picture of the post-recoveryCovid 2021-2022 of the two main regions of the South compared to how it had been imagined so far. In addition, the first Svimez estimates for 2023 went well beyond the forecasts formulated so far by Prometeia for Campania (i.e. +1.3% instead of +0.8%), Puglia (+0.7% instead of +0 .6%), Abruzzo (+1.4% instead of +0.6%), Molise (+1.4% instead of +0.6%), Calabria (+1.2% instead of +0, 6%) and Sicily (+2.2% instead of +0.8%).
Consequently, the GDP of Noon surprisingly it increased in 2023 by 1.3%, i.e. much more than Italy as a whole (+0.9%). Data that also displaces the preliminary estimates prefigured by the first regional reports of the Bank of Italy being presented in recent days, in which growth in the South in 2023 is indicated only at around +0.6%, i.e. less than half the estimate Of Svimez.
In the South, those employed in 2023 also increased more than elsewhere in Italy, i.e. by +2.6%, compared to a national average of +1.8%. According to Svimez, «on the growth of GDP of the South the advancement of public investments had a significant impact. A dynamic on which the progressive advancement of Pnrr investments and the acceleration of spending of European cohesion funds in the closing phase of the 2014-2020 programming cycle should have had a significant impact.” This push was added to that of residential construction.
The tertiary sector has also contributed significantly to the growth of the southern GDP: the driving force of transport, communications and tourism is important. But perhaps the most disruptive fact is that the two key regions of the Southern economy, Campania and Puglia, experienced growth that was nothing short of prodigious in 2020-2023, not episodic but strong and consolidated over several years. In fact, by adding the Svimez revisions of 2022 and the Svimez estimate of the 2023 GDP, these two regions should have recorded a cumulative medium-long term economic growth of +6 in the four-year period 2020-2023 compared to 2019, the pre-pandemic year. Puglia at +4.9% and Campania at +4.9%.
These are development rates from North-East Italy (+5.1% the average growth of this macro-area estimated by Svimez in the same period), with Puglia even above the North-East by one percentage point and Campania at below just two decimals: growth rates decidedly higher than those of the main Euroarea economies. It is perhaps too early to say that the Campania-Puglia axis is becoming a “new North-East” of Italy but the numbers are relevant for the moment. And if this trend were confirmed in 2024-2026, also under the impetus of the public investments envisaged by the National Recovery and Resilience Planfor Italy it would be an epochal leap forward, with an increase in our development potential and also a significant reduction of the North-South gap.
In the four-year period 2020-2023, the economic growth of Campania, according to Svimez data, would have been higher than that of Lombardy and Friuli-Venezia Giulia (both regions with a +4.7%), while that of Puglia would have been more even higher than the growth of superstar regions such as Veneto (+5.9%) and Emilia-Romagna (+5.8%). Driven by tourism, the agri-food chain, public investments but also by a manufacturing industry with important specializations in means of transport, mechanics and pharmaceuticals, Campania and Puglia are two regions that can strengthen themselves in the economic context of our country and offer an increasingly significant contribution to exports too. If the great economist Giorgio Fuà, theorist of industrialization of North East and of the Center, were he still alive, he would certainly rejoice in reading the Svimez numbers, which outline a possible extension of that development model he analyzed to increasingly larger portions of our South.
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