Source: Centro Studi Tagliacarne press office
Rome, 23 August 2022 – The wealth produced by the sea economy is growing again in 2021, +9.3% compared to 2020, bringing the added value generated by businesses in the sector to almost 56
billion euros, but it is still far from recovering pre-Covid levels. There are a total of 225,000 businesses in the blue economy, 3.7% of total businesses, just under two-thirds of which are in
tourism. Lazio is at the top for the number of businesses in the Sea System (15.5%) with Rome leading the provincial ranking with almost 30 thousand companies in the sector (13%).
This is what emerges from an analysis by the Tagliacarne Study Centre on the 10th Sea Economy Report, which it carried out for the Frosinone Latina Chamber of Commerce, Informare
and unioncamere.
After the drastic drop in 2020 that had led to losses of 8 billion euro, the blue economy sector reversed the trend last year. It produced EUR 56 billion but activated a total of EUR 156.7
billion across the entire supply chain, direct and indirect, thanks to its multiplier capacity. This was pointed out by the Director General of the Tagliacarne Study Centre, Gaetano
Fausto Esposito, who added that the good performance of the tourism and logistics sectors, two very important components of the maritime economy, lead us to believe that there will be
very encouraging results in 2022 as well, which will lead the sector to exceed the values of 2019 already this year.
More specifically in sea tourism, accommodation and catering services take the lion’s share with 107,000 enterprises, which together with sports and recreational activities (33,684 enterprises)
account for 62.4% of blue entrepreneurship. This is followed by the fishing industry (33,601), with a weight of 15%, followed by shipbuilding 13% (28,489).
The territorial distribution of blue enterprises inevitably reflects the connection of territories with the marine element. In absolute terms, 47.9% of companies in the marine economy, i.e. almost
half of the national total, are located in the South (107,568 companies), another 26.2% in the Centre (58,755), while the share of the North East is 14.8% and the share of the North West 11.2%.
Going into more detail, the accommodation and food services sector weighs more in the Centre 52.8% and in the South 49.9%. While the fishing industry shows above-average values in the North-East
(23.9%) and in the South (15.8%).
At the regional level, Lazio (15.5%), Campania (14%) and Sicily (12.3%) concentrate over 40% of the seafood enterprises.
In the provincial ranking, if Rome is in the lead with 29,728 blue businesses, Naples follows closely with more than 22 thousand businesses and, with a certain distance, Venice is in third place
with 9,526 businesses. (…)
