By Marcello Condemi
«Rome Caput Mundi»it used to be repeated in past eras, and with good reason!
Today, thousands of years after those glories, it pains us to note the state of difficulty of the economy (and not only) of the capital, while, data in hand, the central role in the country, in economic and financial terms (and not only) belongs to Milan. Some indications taken from the latest reports published with reference to 2021 by the respective Chambers of Commerce, give us an idea of the significant gap separating the two realities.
The activity rate in the Capital (the ratio between the population of working age and the population in employment or seeking employment), compared to that of Milan, is 53.3% against a 69.5%, the employment rate 48.1% against a 58.2%, the unemployment rate 9.8%, against a rate of 6.5% and, finally, we find values of 20.4% and 12.8% with regard to youth unemployment. The comparison, strongly penalising for the Capital, remains so on the entrepreneurial front: alarming (i) is the ratio of registered companies to those actually active, which stands at 76.3% compared to 83.3% for the Milanese territory; even worse is (ii) the growth rate in the number of businesses which, in Lombardy's capital, is 2.3% (significantly higher than the national average of 1.4%) with a positive balance between new businesses registered and those that have ceased to exist of 8612 units, while in the capital it is negative at -10.1% and with an equally negative balance between new businesses registered and those that have ceased to exist of -45358 businesses.
The precipitate of such significant discrepancies then affects the volume of the’import-exportThe Rome area imports EUR 21 billion and exports EUR 12 billion, while the Milan area records volumes of EUR 75.2 billion and EUR 46.1 billion respectively.
The picture is therefore alarming. It is time for politics, not only local politics, to intervene urgently. We must decisively reverse course, restoring to the capital the centrality it deserves, in economic, cultural and image terms, in the national, European and global arena.
What are the possible remedies? In order to restore vigour to the capital, a recent analysis suggests improving the efficiency of the public administrative apparatus (by raising the qualitative level of human capital), so as to raise the productivity of the local economic system and improve the capacity to attract private capital and qualified workers; strengthening existing activities with a higher knowledge intensity (IT, telecommunications, audiovisual, health, cultural activities, research and development, business consultancy) capable of guaranteeing more sustained economic growth and strengthening collaboration between the public research system and private companies; improving the governance of tourism in order to attract a wider (and more qualified) type of traveller.
Published in the daily newspaper “Il Tempo” on 29 September 2023
