A two-faced Italy in 2021: the recovery in the second half of the year will make the country + 4.7% of GDP (after -9% this year), but with a debt that will remain above 160% for for some time, while the growth levels will return to those before Covid only in 2025. This is the forecast by the Studies and Research Department of Intesa Sanpaolo. Globally, thanks to vaccines, the crisis could be overcome from the second half of 2021, with global growth of around 4.8%, offsetting the decline of 4.1% in 2020 and bringing aggregate GDP to pre-crisis levels . In detail for Italy, it will be among the European countries that will take the longest to return to the GDP levels of 2019, but it is destined to show growth rates higher than those considered usual, probably for the entire four-year period 2021-2024. Among the various sectors, the recovery in 2021 will be more marked for investments (+ 10.6% after -8.1% in 2020), mainly driven by construction, than for consumption (+ 4.8% from -10, 9%), still held back by spending on services which will only mark + 4% after the collapse of 16.3% estimated in 2020. It is no coincidence that the propensity to save will remain higher in the period before the pandemic. Unemployment will rise, reaching 11.4%. In any case, fiscal policy will remain accommodative for a long time to come. The impact of the Budget Law will be only a part, while an annual impact from EU subsidies is estimated to be about half a point of GDP growth for the entire three-year period 2021-23. Attention, however, underlines the analysis, because “due to possible delays in the implementation of the projects” the greatest impact could only be had from 2022. It will therefore be necessary for medium-term growth “to accompany stimuli on the demand side with structural reforms on the supply side “. However, fiscal policy will remain expansive for a long time, the role of institutional holders will become increasingly wider in the coming years and “the debt net of liabilities to the EU and the Eurosystem (just over 100% of GDP or much lower than the” gross “debt ) will not deviate much from pre-COVID levels, which should make Italian debt less exposed to the volatility of financial markets than in the past “.
–
