According to Confesercenti estimates, household spending fell by 1.5% in the first three months of 2021, cumulating a decline of 6.6 billion since last summer (-2.7%). This is what underlined the secretary general Mauro Bussoni during the hearing on the Def before the joint budget committee of the Chamber and Senate. Consumption is confirmed as the element of greatest fragility in the forecast scenario of the Def, he states, observing that household spending is not considered a driving force for growth. Furthermore, he notes, the restrictions have led to an unstructured and non-governed distribution of the sales quotas towards the online channel. According to Bussoni, until now the only constant for companies has been uncertainty, we hope that now there will be greater certainty, he continues, underlining the need to secure companies.
Tourism halved
Moving to the item “tourism”, one of the most important in the Italian economy, Confesercenti underlined at the hearing that in 2020 the tourist presences in Italy dropped from almost 437 million to 203 million, with a contraction of 53.3% and a downsizing of the estimated expenditure of 88 billion euros. A decline continued throughout the first part of 2021, due to the decrees that prevented travel. According to the assessments of the association, the trends observed to date would determine at the end of the year – even assuming a gradual normalization as summer approaches – a further loss of almost 15 million admissions (-20.9% on the already dramatic 2020) . Bussoni explained that although the collapse is generalized, among the tourist categories, that of large cities with a cultural and artistic vocation in particular suffering. The data are from Istat, which indicates the decline in total presences in these areas around 75% for the whole of 2020. The particular characteristic of the tourist flows in these cities is the high percentage of foreign presences, Bussoni said, which have practically disappeared. If we consider, for example, Rome, Florence, Venice, Naples and Palermo, these constitute a share ranging from 58 to 75% of the total attendance in 2019.