1/9/2011 00:00:00
According to a study carried out by Confcommercio, in the last years the contribution of South in terms of consumption decreased compared to the national total, with a share down from 27.2% in 2007 to 26.6% in 2011. The northern regions, on the contrary show shares in constant increase both in North East (from 21.8% to 22.2%) and North West (from 30.1% to 30.6%). The weak performances of the South are joined by the effects of the demographic decrease recorded in this area (the share of population over the national total decreased from 36.4% in 1995 to 34.4% in 2011) which affected the continuous decrease in consumption also in 2010. At the level of individual regions, in 2009, all recorded a decline in consumer spending in real terms, with peaks in Calabria (-4.2%), Puglia (-3.6%), Sicily (-3.2%) and Campania (-3.0%), while in 2010 only the North-East has recovered the pre-crisis levels of consumption. In any case, the weakness of per capita consumption, also due to the crisis of the biennium 2008-2009, suggests a general slowing down in exiting the crisis, such as that at the end of 2011 17 regions out of 20 risk to record a level of consumption lower than in 2000, while in a longer term perspective, in 2017 the South will have exacerbated the gap with a continuous decrease in consumer spending compared to the national total. In any case, although the different dynamics in consumption show a greater weakness of the Sothern regions, confirming the gap between different regions in the country, in general it should be noted the attempt by families to recover the consumption levels lost in two years of recession even if the forecast for 2011 remain modest throughout the whole territory with +0.8%.
