CARMELO PETRAGLIA: “THE ECONOMIC CONTEXT IN ITALY IS WORRYING”

Italy was the first European country to sound the alarm about the severity of the Covid-19 virus. The North of the country was the most affected and the lockdown began on March 8 and continues to this day. Señal News interviewed Carmelo Petraglia, Consultant Economist at Svimez, who analyzed the economic effects on the country and the risks for the audiovisual sector.

“The economic context in Italy is a quite worrying at the moment, all non essential or priority economic activities have been suspended, as a consequence of the lockdown measures introduced by the Government on early March to contain the spread of the virus implying a sudden stop in production, lower income for households, a lower consumption, fewer jobs and losses of jobs,” said Petraglia. “Italy could go through the deepest recesión since the Second World War,” affirmed.  

The coronavirus crisis is affecting all of Italy but it does not affect the north in the same way as in the south of the country. Svimez prepared the report The Economics and Social impacts of the Pandemic in Italy that shows the cost of one month of lockdown is about 37 billions euros in the North and about 10 billions euros in the South.

The main question is when Italy will start to recover.  “It’s very hard to know it,” asserted Petraglia who is also profesor of economics at the University of Basilicata. “What we do know is that recovering will not be easy for our economy because Italy was already lagging behind other European economies,” indicated.

The impact of the Pandemic across industries is quite “uneven” affimed the economist.  The sector that is directly affected is agriculture, there are a number of common effects across sectors on the supplier side because of the disruption of the supply chains and because of business travel restrictions, explained.

Petraglia also said that demand-effects processes are also different across industries or services and that happens in Italy as well in other countries. “Economic activities that rely more on face to face activities have suffered an immediate negative demand shock because the social distancing measures, this is the case of many different services like personal care services, general turism, accomodation, food services, drinking places, bar and restaurants, for instance, in some regions are lost a 70 to 90% of normal revenues and the uncertainty about how long travel restrictions will continue is likely to have a very significant impact in the tourism in Italy,” analyzed.

The Economist also talked about the effects of the crisis in the audiovisual sector. “The crisis is affecting notorily film industry but more in general the cultural and creative sectors,” asserted.

By Romina Rodríguez