Craftsmanship, modest signs of recovery in Sardinia: but it is still an emergency
Oristano and Sassari are the areas in which the crisis has made itself felt most
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In 2022 the handicraft sector in Sardinia begins to show some signs of recovery but remains in a state of emergency .
This is what emerges from the data of the Sardinian Chambers of Commerce, processed by the Cna Sardinia Study Center: there are 34,207 Sardinian artisan enterprises active at the end of 2021 . With 0.3% less than in 2020, the regional sector recorded the thirteenth consecutive year of crisis despite a modest recovery during the second half of last year and up to the first quarter of 2022.
At the end of 2021 there were just under 2,200 new registrations in the register of artisan companies , a figure that exceeds the very modest result of 2020 (1,800) but also the level of 2019 (2,076). However, this increase does not define an improving entrepreneurial structure, even if at the beginning of this year the number of active artisan businesses is growing (+ 0.5% compared to the first quarter of 2021) . Numbers still insufficient.
"The economic crisis induced by the health emergency has impacted a sector already burdened by a long-lasting structural crisis and on which the support measures implemented by the Government seem not to have had a decisive effect - underline Luigi Tomasi and Francesco Porcu , respectively president and regional secretary of the Sardinian Cna. - The various incentives (fiscal and liquidity) have not been able to stem a haemorrhage that has become structural . are further burdened by the most recent factors holding back production and worsening the climate of confidence. It is clear that especially small businesses, already cut off from the infrastructure sector that is expanding in the region, also through measures to stimulate the economy , are highly dependent on the state of health of private demand ".
THE NATIONAL SCENARIO - Sardinia is among the regions with a decrease in line with the national average (-0.6%), but there are territories where the reduction is close to 3% (Marche and Abruzzo), and certainly relevant is the the case of Lombardy, where the number of artisan businesses is 2% lower than in 2019. Same negative percentage in Tuscany.
THE CRISIS - The regional handicraft system had grown continuously in demographic terms until 2008 , when as many as 43 thousand artisan enterprises were registered in Sardinia (compared to about 34 thousand today), 28.5% of the total. After the crisis, artisans represent less than 24% of the total of Sardinian companies . A fact that, however, leaves Sardinia the primacy among the regions of the South .
Even after the stabilization of the most recent months, in the balance between the first quarter of 2022 and 2009, almost 3,800 artisan enterprises active in the construction sector have exited the market ; 1,100 from the transport, storage and communications sector, 2,500 from the manufacturing industry, of which over 750 from the wood industry (from 1,940 in 2009) and over 460 from that of metal carpentry (they were 1,700 in 2009).
Looking at the non-artisan component , therefore at the more structured companies, which overall have kept the balance positive in recent years, those active in the trade sector decreased by over 4,200 units between 2009 and the first quarter 2022 (almost 3,700 in the trade retail). A sector that recorded a decline in active companies even among the most structured ones in the first quarter of 2022, indicating that the effects of the pandemic crisis continue to be felt. Positive signals come instead from the more structured companies active in the hotel and catering sector , which grew by over 2,800 units between 2009 and the end of March 2022, with a positive sign also in the most recent data (+ 2.2%) compared to a little more than stagnant dynamic among artisan enterprises (+ 0.4%).
DATA BY TERRITORY - At the territorial level, the dynamics are not homogeneous: at the end of 2021 the artisan enterprises active in the province of Nuoro are up by 2.3% compared to 2019, as they had also been in the pandemic year. Even in Cagliari the balance is positive overall, albeit more modest .
The territories characterized by the escape of artisans are those in the north of the island but above all in the Oristano area: here, even considering the recovery recorded in the first quarter of 2022, the artisan businesses have decreased by 33% compared to 2009. The balance in the long term however, it is negative in all territories, with a negative percentage exceeding 20% in Sassari , 18% in Cagliari and 16% in Nuoro .
(Unioneonline / D)
