Against the odds, Italy’s economic growth – 4th Q 2019 through 3rd Q of 2022-- is better than Germany, France and Spain. Communicating constantly in English to lead the business narrative and favour the international appreciation of Italy’s economic assets, remains an area of improvement for Italy.
According to Fondazione Edison's analysis, Italy regained the economic performance of the pre-pandemic period. From the fourth quarter of 2019 to the third quarter of 2022, in fact, Italy had the largest increase in terms of real GDP (+1.8%), household consumption (+0.4%), investments in machinery and plants (+18.8%), investment in construction (+24.8%) and export of goods (+8%) as compared to Germany, France and Spain. Manufacturing continues to be the pillar of Italy’s resilience and strength.
The industrial policy, known in in Italy as “Industry 4.0”, incentivizing investments in digital assets, skills and modern machinery paid off. Italy recovered pre-crisis levels in the third quarter of this year (+0.3% compared to the fourth quarter of 2019), while Germany (-2.3%), Spain (-4%) and France (-5.6%) are lagging behind. Notably, during Draghi’s government, the quarterly GDP grew overall by 8.4 percent. This is in striking contrast vs October 2020 forecasts of the European Commission that attributed a cumulative progress for the same seven quarters +5.5%, in line with the growth, at the time, expected for Germany (+5.2%). Italy grew by 2.9 percentage points more than expected -- from the first quarter of 2021 to the third quarter of 2022 -- while Germany grew by 2 and a half points less. This is, however, not surprising as Italy’s capability to lead its international business narrative in English continues to be weak.
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