Italy is one of the most representative country in the world, relatively to the regional inequalities: to have an idea of this phenomenon, it could be enough to observe that the GDP pro capita of the south regions of the Italy is half than the one of north regions, moreover, bringing the attention to the growth of the indicator, we can observe that in the last 10 years, from 2001 until 2010, the South of Italy registered an annual average negative, -0,3%, strongly far from the +3,5% of the North; last but not the latest, the industry is knowing the risk of disappearing totally, too: because of the crisis, in fact, the Italy has lost 533 thousand of workers and 281 thousand of this from the south, this is a very alarming data if you consider that in the South there is less than 30% of total working force of the Italy.
In this situation of clear inequality, there’s a region, Abruzzo, of the south Italy which is emerged because of his capability to innovate and create a center of industrialization which makes the difference relating to the other southern regions.
During the 50s the Region had all the features of the underdevelopment: a journalist of the “Times” described it as a “region of the deep South, if this word means remoteness and poverty”. The population was around one million of people and more than two hundred thousand left the region in the period 1951-’75 (Cao-Pinna, 1979).
About the regional industrial sector, in 1975 the Abruzzo had an “operative structure which the Italian industrial system reached in 1961” (Federazione Industriali di Abruzzo, 1975: 4). In fact, by observing the industrialization index in the period 1951-1961, it was less than the values of South Italy, which in turns were even lower than the national average; after the 1961 the Abruzzo began to grow and actually it became the most industrialized region of the South Italy and the industrialization index even exceeds the Italian one. This alteration was mainly due to the establishment in the region of two big industrial complexes: SIV (Società Italiana Vetro) and Siemens.
Later, the Abruzzo accelerates his industrialization process, and it appears very singular because the region could grow in a particular period of general deindustrialization.
The industry model which was born in Abruzzo was strictly original because it was characterized, on one side, by the presence of small and diffused little enterprises, and on the other side, by the principle of polarization: in this original model, the big enterprises, belonging to external group which have big market share, both at national and at international level, establish close relations with entrepreneurs strictly linked to the territory, those one who before were artisans and who decided to organize their activities in an enterprise form.
Mainly the industrial asset of the region is so characterized:
Vasto – San Salvo area: big productive unities in the automotive, motorcycle and glassmaker industries
Area of internal Abruzzo: middle and big enterprise in electronic, telecommunication, chemistry and electro-mechanic industries
Industrial district of Val Vibrata: characterized by a complex and articulated network of small local operators, specialized in manufacture production.
By a quantitative point of view, there are three factors which explain the anomaly of the Abruzzo relating with the southern area: the evolution of GDP, the development of the employment and the dynamicity of the export: in the years later the 1970, you can observe an acceleration in the growth index of GDP which reached the pick in 1992, in 50 years the Abruzzo increased its GDP in 33%, moving by one of the last of the South in the first of it (Mauro, 2001:141). In this situation the number of the enterprises and the employment increased. A strong role in this process of growth is the virtuous circle created by incentives-institutions-enterprises. Actually, in Abruzzo there weren’t those phenomena of collusion among politic power and enterprises, which has decreed the “failure” of the other enterprises of the southern Italy.
The other factor which is at the basis of the develop of the region is the dotation of infrastructure which made possible spreading the development also in the most intern area of the region: an index elaborated by Mezzogiorno explains that the infrastructural dotation of Abruzzo is 90,2% relating to Italy. Thanks to continuous improvements of the infrastructures, it was possible moving the Abruzzo by an isolated region of southern Italy in a region at the center of national and international trading. In this way, its geographic placement has become an authentic factor of development.
Last but not latest, the export has represented an incredible factor of development for the Abruzzo: in the 90s the Abruzzo did a performance very superior to Italian average, in fact the contribute of the region to the national export, increased by 1,3% to 2,1% in these years. In particular, the Abruzzo shows a specialization of exportation index higher than the all Italy, in two particular sectors: textile and automotive (Tab. 2.). To well see, those ones synthetize perfectly the structure of the economy of the Abruzzo, based on two pilasters which are the district system of small enterprises and the big industry. Little wonder that this kind of trade, should fail because of the impact of countries in development, such as China, India, Brazil, but actually the system born in Abruzzo, was able to avoid the competition of those ones thanks to continuous process of innovation conducted together, in system, and so thanks to marketing policies which valorize the quality and the innovation of processes to cut costs.
It’s clear, at this point of the discussion, that the Abruzzo represents surely a piece of North in the Southern Italy, what is less clear, is the reason of this difference: in essence, the Abruzzo didn’t participate in the phenomena of collusion between political-administrative power and enterprises, that in all the other regions of the South have degraded the civil and political life and determined waste of resources. It follows that the public intervention, ordinary or extraordinary, did not bring the achievement of such illegal equilibrium, but on the contrary, has encouraged the development of efficient and competitive activities.
This virtuous interaction between institutions and entrepreneurship is at the basis of the development of the region, it is actually the most important precondition for the starting of development policy and this is probably what the other regions of the South need in this historical moment, characterized by too many difficulties.
[Artigo de opinião produzido no âmbito da unidade curricular “Economia Regional” do 3.º ano do curso de Economia (1.º ciclo) da EEG/UMinho]
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