Milan hopes to return to its role as the engine of the Italian economy

resistanceegeneration: For the Milan business community, this is not just the name of the most important local business association plenary meeting in Italy, but the name of the association is Assolombarda. This term is also related to the hope that the Milan metropolis will continue its economic prosperity, which was suddenly interrupted by the corona pandemic. Lombardy and the neighboring provinces of Lodi, especially Bergamo, have been hit particularly hard. So far, 842,000 of Lombard’s 10 million residents have been infected and nearly 34,000 have died.

In addition, Milan, Lodi, Monza-Brianza, and the new president of Assolombarda, the Association of Entrepreneurs of the Province of Pavia, Alessandro Spada, are trying to follow other regular conventions as an example: In order for the Italian National Banking Association or the pharmaceutical industry to hold a virtual annual meeting on the Internet, the president of Assolombarda decided to hold a face-to-face event.

In turn, this is not happening in the ordinary congress hall, but on a construction site where the industrial wasteland of the old steel mill can be seen regenerated into residential and commercial areas. “Lombardy was the first Italian region to be attacked by Covid19, and the impact here is particularly severe,” Spada said in an interview with FAZ.

Soaring after the Expo

After the Expo World Expo In 2015, the hot topic in Italy is that Milan is about to soar. At the same time as the World Expo was held, a new city center in the city center was also built, with the first batch of high-rise banks. The annual furniture fair has become more and more an international conference of modern design, taking place more and more outside the exhibition center, in the city center. Milan has become very attractive to the tourism industry, as many other stalled projects that have been granted long-term permits for the Expo 2015 may suddenly be fully realized. Following the 6.6 million visitors in 2014, the Expo had 7.4 million visitors in the year and then reached 8 million in 2019.

In any case, Milan’s economic strength is undisputed: Assolombarda has 468,000 companies and the area has 4.9 million inhabitants (8.2% of the Italian population). This in turn accounted for 10% of all Italian companies with more than 2 million employees (12% of Italy. They accounted for 13% of the country’s added value. Between 2015 and 2019, the actual economic growth was also as high as Italy’s average. , Which is 10.3% instead of Italy’s 5%. Corona’s crash in 2020 is slightly lower than Italy’s average, as Lombardy lost 9.4% of its gross domestic product (GDP) compared to Italy’s overall 8.9% Two furniture fairs were cancelled, fashion shows had to be moved to the Internet, and Milan was left with very few empty hotels.