The long recession that Italy is
still struggling to recover from has hit the country's less
wealthy southern regions much harder than the rest of the
nation, Istat said Friday.
The national statistics agency said it estimated that
southern Italy's gross domestic product fell 4% in 2013, more
than twice the national average of 1.9%.
Istat said that the "dynamics" of the recession were
"different at the regional level" even though GDP fell
everywhere last year.
While the south suffered most, GDP in central Italy dropped
1.8%, while it fell 1.5% in the north-east and 0.6% in the
north-west.
Italy looked to have come out of its longest postwar
recession when it posted a rise in GDP of 0.1% in the last
quarter of 2013.
But recovery hopes were dented last month when Istat said
GDP actually shrank by 0.1% in the first three months of this
year, rather than increase as had been expected.
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