Italy's South to grow by 0.4% in 2023 - Svimez

(ANSA) - ROME, DEC 5 - The economic divide between Italy's central-northern and its southern regions has returned in 2023 after two years of alignment, the association for industrial development in southern Italy Svimez said on Tuesday.
    In a report Svimez said GDP in southern Italy is set to rise by 0.4% in 2023, compared to 0.8% in the centre and north and 0.7% at national level.
    The gap is due to differences in consumption trends, the association added.
    The contraction in the disposable income of households in the South (-2%) is also double that of those in the Centre-North, Svimez said.
    The association forecasts that in 2024 GDP will grow by 0.7% at a national level (+0.7 in the Centre-North and +0.6 in the South) and in 2025 by 1.2% (+1.3 in the Centre-North and +0.9% in the South).
    Growth is linked to the implementation of the EU-funded post-Covid National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP) to make the economy greener and more modern.
    Part of the problem is that, although the employment rate has risen more in the South than in the rest of the country, this has not been enough to alleviate social unease in a context of widespread precariousness and low salaries, according to the Svimez report, which indicates "wages, poor work and youth emigration as the most urgent issues".
    In southern Italy, absolute poverty among households with an employed person of reference rose by 1.7 percentage points between 2020 and 2022, from 7.6% to 9.3%.
    Overall, in 2022 there were 2.5 million people living in households in absolute poverty in the South, up by 250,000 over 2020.
    Over the same period, the number of people living in households in absolute poverty in the the Centre-North fell by 170,000. (ANSA).