Abruzzo, growing economy but remains the hub of the Rome-Pescara railway

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The first region of the South in terms of GDP per capita (24,400 euros), with an increasing twenty-year trend, with 17,300 more jobs (there were 499,600 in March, +3.5% compared to the previous year) and 5,000 fewer unemployed in the last year (there are 44,400, with a rate of 8.2% far from 15.3% in the South), but also the one that nonetheless recorded the heaviest percentage drop in the workforce from the pandemic to today (-24,000 employees), with self-employed workers down by 1.5%, with higher mortality of sole proprietorships and 14,000 more inactive people in the last year.

As for exports, the excellent sectors such as pharmaceuticals (+62.1%), food and beverages (+25.7%) and textile clothing (+17.8%) are confirmed, but turnover from abroad has dropped from an incidence of 51.7% in 2019 to 32.7%, although strongly conditioned by the decline recorded in the transport sector.

It is the photograph of Abruzzo drawn by the president of Confindustria Chieti Pescara and the industrialists of the region, Silvano Pagliuca. «Region in transition for Europe, which in any case develops more slowly than the Italian average and with an entrepreneurial fabric made up of very small companies, which still remains one of our critical points».

Today, moreover, thanks to the results guaranteed in the first year of activity of the Zes (all Pnrr works will be tendered by December, ed) and the inclusion of Abruzzo in the TEN-T networks for Pagliuca there are «powerful tools to also intercept the global trend of reshoring, making the region become an investment attractor». Provided that there are no delays in the implementation of the Plan which “risks compromising the entire territorial planning in support of the production system” and in particular on the construction of priority infrastructures, starting with the doubling of the 240 km of the Pescara-Rome railway line.

For a few weeks now, entrepreneurs from Abruzzo have raised their voices on the announced reallocation of the 600 million euros of the work envisaged in the Pnrr. The pressing of the Region against Rfi is strong, so much so that a summit was announced on Monday in Avezzano on the occasion of the convention on Zes, which will also be attended by Gianpiero Strisciuglio, CEO of Rfi, and the extraordinary commissioner for intervention on the line, Vincenzo Macello.