Masalah Krisis Ekonomi Meruncing di Italia

Menurut Reuters, Ogos 13, 2011 di bandar Sulmona yang berkependudukan 25,000 orang yang dekat dengan pusat muka bumi Italia sedang mengalami masalah. Penduduk Franca Minichini, 51 menyatakan bahawa Sulmona waktu itu gelap sahaja, tak ada kerja apa pun.  

Purata tahunan pertumbuhan 0.3 peratus sejak sedekad lalu, Italia bertumbuh lebih pantas sedikit sahaja dari Zimbabwe, Eritrea dan Haiti. Sekarang ini langkah yang didedahkan pada Jumaat untuk mencapai kehendak Kesatuan Eropah bagi mengurangkan hutangnya walaupun defisit sekarang masih rendah nampaknya akan menyekat permintaan lebih jauh lagi. "Hal ini bukan sesuatu yang baru. Rantau ini sudah tertekak sejak sekian lama", jelas Fabrizio ketika dia berdiri di kios akhbar yang disirami cahaya suram sambil dikelilingi akhbar dengan tajuk berita utama seperti "Krisis", "Keruntuhan Pasaran Saham" dan "Kekacauan dalam Kerajaan". "Namun... kini, ramai orang sedang takut. Mereka menjangkakan langkah-langkah yang diambil mungkin memberi kesan besar kepada kelompok golongan pertengahan".

Perbelanjaan pengguna pun menurun ke 4-5 peratus tahun lepas di sekitar rantau Abruzzo, kata Franco Ruggieri, timbalan presiden pertubuhan perniagaan kecil tempatan Confesercenti, semasa beliau menghidangkan kappucino di kafe yang diuruskannya di Corso Ovidio. "Ia masih gagal", jelasnya, ditambah pula dengan kesan gempa bumi di L'Aquila. "Penduduk pun tidak berbelanja dan pemotongan perbelanjaan itu memburukkan lagi ekonomi". "Namun, kebimbangan sebenar kini adalah ketidakpastian. Dua bulan lepas, mereka kata semuanya baik-baik saja tapi sekarang ini, muncul pula langkah kecemasan lepas satu, satu", katanya. "Kami tidak tahu hendak percaya kepada siapa lagi".

 
EURO PAIN
Franca Minichini felt her own job in local government was safe. But she fretted for her children in a city where the past decade has left the industrial zone beyond the walls a virtual ghost town: "There's no end to it," she said. "Everyone's been laid off ... Even if you work, you can't afford to live."
Real purchasing power has fallen 4 percent in 10 years.
For 22-year-old Laura Pallotta, on vacation from her political science studies in Rome, cuts in funding for education were a big concern, but her generation was also deeply fearful for its future: "The biggest worry for us now is finding a job after we graduate ... It's a worry for all of us."
How Italians may respond to more pain is unclear.
Anger but also deep resignation is a common emotion directed at not just Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's right-wing government but at an entire political elite seen as corrupt and unaccountable. "They should all go," said Minichini. "If there are to be cuts, they should start by cutting themselves."
But asked who she would prefer to govern in place of the veteran media tycoon, she could offer only a shrug and a smile.
Like others, she associated the decline of local industry with the introduction of the single European currency a decade ago: "The euro ruined everything," she said.
But like most Italians, the idea of the euro zone's third biggest economy opting out of the project does not seem practical, even if a return to the often-devalued lira might offer a short-term fix for the debt burden and sluggish exports.
"Before the euro, Sulmona was doing really well, but now our prices are too high. We've lost our factories," said Alfonso De Dominicis, 58, a former factory and construction worker who now drives a taxi. "Since we had the euro, it's been awful."
DISCREDITED POLITICS
But, he said, it was too late to opt out. The best way forward for politicians of right and left, who seemed uniformly to him to be "thieves" not worth voting for, would be to follow the example of economic growth set by Germany, where he himself spent many years as a young "guest worker" in the 1970s and 80s.
"We should learn from the German example. We have the workers, the skills," De Dominicis said. "It's the government that's to blame. In Germany, they have a government that does what's good for the country. Here, ours just think 'I'm doing all right' and they don't give a damn for anyone else.
"It's always us who pay, the ordinary people."
The idea of greater EU intervention in national affairs is anathema in much of Europe, but in Italy, where Economy Minister Giulio Tremonti suggested Saturday more integration of public finances across the bloc [nR1E7J6027], added external leverage over a discredited ruling class has attractions for some.
"Our politicians have done nothing for years," said one small trader who did not want to be quoted by name.
"They're only acting now because Europe is forcing them, otherwise we'd be risking total bankruptcy. It wouldn't be bad perhaps if we had more European government. Ours are no good."
SURVIVAL, METAMORPHOSES
While Sulmona's young people start to follow forebears in heading north or abroad for work, and some of those left behind mutter darkly about "revolution," there is daily talk of efforts to save the city from the latest of its many crises.
This month a plant producing components for carmaker Fiat announced hirings for a new assembly line. Tourism is contributing more to the town's economy. And local gourmet foodstuffs, from fine Abruzzo pasta to saffron, truffles and famed Sulmona red garlic, are also increasingly promoted abroad.
Emanuele Giammarco, 32, is the 10th generation of his family to manage the Rapone company producing a luxury artisan version of 'confetti', the sugared almonds ubiquitous at Italian weddings and for which Sulmona is renowned. For him, the answer to the crisis is a focus on luxury quality -- and new markets.
Cheaper foreign competition has hit the confetti factories. But, said Giammarco as he served in the family's antique shop on the piazza beneath photographs of celebrity customers: "We in the luxury sector don't feel the crisis as much as mass-market producers. As Italians spend less, we are always finding new markets, in the Middle East, China, Russia, eastern Europe."
In a line that echoed the theme of constant change from "Metamorphoses," the great epic of Sulmona-born Ovid who stands in bronze outside, Giammarco concluded: "High finance is a big bubble. But we have to adapt and we must go forward."
(Editing by Rosalind Russell)