IT SEEMS that some PIIGS can fly. During the euro crisis Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain looked wobbly and, because of their initials, earned an unflattering porcine label. Yet three of the five grew robustly in 2015 (see chart). The laggard was Greece, still labouring under the terms of its bail-out.
Italy, too, performed disappointingly. In December the bosses’ association Confindustria downgraded its estimate of growth in 2015 to 0.8%. No one is expecting a big surge in 2016. The EU expects Italian GDP to rise 1.5%, but last year’s quarter-on-quarter figures suggested growth was slowing (from 0.3% in the first two quarters to 0.2% in the third). “There is a recovery,” the finance minister, Pier Carlo Padoan, told business leaders in December. “But it is weak.” Advisers to the prime minister, Matteo Renzi, worry that the world economy will enter a cyclical downturn before Italy regains the ground it lost in the financial and euro crises.
Confindustria’s researchers called Italy’s lacklustre recovery “a real puzzle”. The prime minister is energetic and reform-minded. His left-right coalition has done good...Continue reading
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