(Finance) – Second Confessors at the end of 2023 i consumption of Italian families should record an increase of +1.2% compared to 2022. During its assembly annual, the merchants’ association underlined that this is a positive result even if slightly lower than the Nadef expectations of last September and, above all, mainly due to the good performance of the first half of the year. In comparison with 2022, Confesercenti underlined, i consumption they grew by +3.7% and +1.2% in the January-March and April-June periods, while they decreased by -0.2% in the summer quarter.
In the presence of a further real fall of the income from work (-1.3% in 2023 which leads to a cumulative decline of 2.5% compared to 2021), the consumption dynamic was supported by the strong reduction in propensity to save, which fell to the lowest levels in the last 35 years. A condition that will probably disappear during 2024, when, faced with high interest rates, Italian families will once again be induced to increase their savings, with a growth in consumption which would consequently stop at 0.8%, five tenths of a point less than what was forecast in the Nadefequal to 4.2 billion euros.
As regards the end of year holidaysaccording to a survey Confesercenti-IPSOS, Italians plan to spend on average 223 euros for Christmas Gifts, 13% more than last year. The push, however, is also the increase in prices, in fact, net of inflation on goods, the increase in spending for 2022 is reduced to +6%. After a year of ups and downs, the month of December should close with a plus sign for consumption, even if there is no shortage of critical issues for small and medium-sized commercial enterprises. Starting from the competition of the international giants ofeCommercepositioned to win the Christmas gift challenge this year.
“Open a shop it is an increasingly impossible mission. Cost of living, slowdown in consumption, competition from the web are not only accelerating the closures of commercial businesses, but are also causing the collapse of new births“, declared the president of Confesercenti, Patrizia De Luise, opening the association’s meeting. “In 2023 it is estimated that only just over 20 thousand businesses in the sector will open their doors for the first time, 8% less than in 2022. In ten years a collapse: in 2013 there were over 44 thousand, more than double. A crisis of decline in birth rate which has decimated the commercial fabric and which, withouttrend reversalis destined to continue.”
“The arrival of Bolkestein it has thrown around 200 thousand Italian companies and 400 thousand workers into uncertainty. An uncertainty that has persisted for over a decade and, between extensions and contradictory provisions, the question is still open”, added De Luise. “We reiterate our opposition to the introduction of a legal minimum wage. A legislative intervention in this area risks altering the economic and negotiating balances achieved in seventy years of collective bargaining. Just as it would be absurd to take only the ‘most applied’ national contract in the sector as a reference to establish the minimum economic treatment”, stated the president.