Two years after the start of the crisis triggered by Covid – the damage of which has yet to be recovered – a new emergency is sweeping our economy. The effect of the rush in energy, gas and fuel prices, exasperated by the Ukrainian crisis, in fact, risks bringing the rate of inflation at 8%: a level that in Italy not seen since the 1980s and that could cost us this year 26.1 billion euros in lower consumption and one reduction of 41.3 billion the expected increase in gross domestic product. To sound the alarm is Confesercenti, in a dossier that takes stock of the two years that have passed since the first lockdown, analyzing the tiring recovery path taken after the collapse caused by the pandemic in 2020.
Unfortunately, a recovery still incomplete: despite last year’s post-pandemic recovery, at the end of 2021 the GDP was still 52 billion euros below the levels of 2019, consumption at -71 billion, and also tourist presences still 174 million below the pre-covid. And the path of recovery, now, could be abruptly interrupted by the high energy and further tensions generated by the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.
The new scenario opened by the invasion, in fact, forces us to revise the forecasts for the current year downwards: GDP growth in 2022 would go from the forecast +61.5 billion (+ 3.7% on 2021) to +20 , 2 billion (+ 1.2%), that of consumption from +35.9 billion euros initially expected to just +9.8 billion. A slowdown that postpones the return to pre-covid levels until a later date: at the end of this year, GDP would still remain 52 billion below the 2019 values, while the consumption gap would settle at -31.5 billion. EUR. A further obstacle for companies, which are already coming from a difficult period: the pandemic has cost almost 325,000 self-employed workers their jobs in two years.
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