“Maxi federalist snatch from the north to the south”. Il Fatto Quotidiano calls it that. It all comes from a Bank of Italy study on investments and infrastructures. “The endowment of infrastructures affects the ability of an economy to grow and the level of well-being of the community. The competitiveness of companies is closely linked to the availability of an adequate transport and telecommunications network, as well as to quality ‘of the energy and water service – which represent essential inputs of production processes “. This is what we read in the report ‘The infrastructural gaps in Italy: a case-by-case measurement’ by Mauro Bucci, Elena Gennari, Giorgio Ivaldi, Giovanna Messina and Luca Moller published by the Bank of Italy. According to scholars, the decline in investments in recent years in Italy has widened the differences already present in the various areas of the country.
Capital spent on public investments is still decreasing
In the last decade, the study highlights, “in all the main advanced economies, the accumulation of public capital has come to a halt. In Italy, the reduction of public spending on investments (including transfers to private entities that carry out public works or public utility) was particularly intense between 2009 and 2019, going from 4.6 to 2.9% of GDP. The resources allocated to both the expansion and maintenance of infrastructures decreased, with consequent expansion quantitative and qualitative gap with respect to other European countries; the endowment of public capital in the areas of the country that had already been lagging behind was affected “.
Bankitalia: “The gap between north and south is still very strong”
The relaunch of public investments and the rebalancing of territorial gaps are some of the pillars on which the European pandemic crisis response strategy rests, which is characterized by the implementation of new financial support tools for public investments (with the Next generation program EU). All the main international organizations agree in attributing in particular to investments in public infrastructures a leading role in the recovery of the economy and in favoring its transition towards a more resilient, inclusive and sustainable structure in the post-emergency phase. These policies have an almost unanimous consensus among economists. The reconstruction documents the presence in our country of very pronounced differences in the endowment of the main economic and social infrastructures between the different territories. With reference to transport infrastructures, it emerges that the areas with the fastest road and rail connections as well as those with the greatest possibilities of access to the main airports and ports, in terms of freight traffic, are mainly located in the central-northern regions ( in particular in Piedmont, Liguria, Lombardy, Veneto, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany); the regions of the South and the Islands are at a relative disadvantage, with the exception of the areas of the Tyrrhenian Sea, limited to the possibility of accessing ports that are relevant only for passenger traffic.
The North-South Investment Split
Communication networks present a less marked North-South dichotomy if we look at the availability of infrastructures, especially as regards the high-speed mobile network (a different discourse concerns actual access to the network, which reflects the heterogeneity of the economic conditions and digital culture of families). The infrastructural gap, on the other hand, appears very deep in the distribution of electricity and water: in the southern and island regions the frequency of unannounced interruptions of the electricity service for low voltage users is more than double compared to the rest. in the country, over a third of medium voltage users receive a service below the standards set by national regulation and the aqueducts disperse a share of water 1.4 times higher than in the rest of the country. As far as social infrastructures are concerned, the analysis is limited to those categories of goods that allow easier data handling (hospitals and waste disposal plants). Also for these infrastructures a very marked degree of “territorial differentiation” emerges. The hospital network is particularly developed in the Po Valley and in some central areas: overall, a citizen residing in a southern or island region has the possibility of accessing beds in hospitals that are 40% lower than a resident in a central-northern region ( the distance is accentuated if the comparison is restricted to the relevant specializations in the current phase of health emergency and if the impact of the quality of care is considered). The provision of environmental services also suffers from a particularly accentuated lack of infrastructure in the south of the country, which presents unfavorable conditions for access to waste treatment plants, particularly as regards the management of the organic separate component. The lower availability of plants affects the costs paid by users and hinders a reorganization of the service based on the adoption of punctual tariffs (which induce families to produce less waste and to differentiate more, but require adequate equipment).