Risk of delay in recovery to 2022 - Confindustria

(ANSA) - ROME, 23 NOV - Italy's real post-COVID economic recovery may not come until 2022, industrial employers group Confindustria said Monday.
    Confindustria, Director-General Francesca Mariotti told parliament that the latest economic figures including an unprecedented drop in GDP could mean the recovery would be delayed until 2022.
    With GDP "registering a drop never before seen in peacetime", he said, data for the fourth quarter of this year "do not indicate a continuation in the recovery".
    He said achieving GDP recoveries of around 5% next year, which had been expected up to a month ago, would require strong positive variations in the second quarter, which now appear hard to achieve.
    Italy's industrialists, Mariotti said, believe that "a (new) strategy of post-pandemic recovery" is essential.
    He said investments and reforms were needed.
    Italy's GDP is set to contract by 11-13% this year and then rebound next year by 4-6%, according to various previous estimates.
    The Italian economy will not return to pre-COVID levels in 2022, the European Commission said in its updated economic forecasts earlier this month.
    It said the economy is recovering from a steep virus-linked decline "but it is unlikely that the recovery will be sufficient to get production back to pre-pandemic levels by 2022". (ANSA).