The role of cinema and audiovisual industry in the Italian economic development, the profitability of the sector, the dimension and the nature of the workforce employed. These are the themes of the Report ‘Cinema and Audiovisual: the impact on employment and growth in Italy’, the first research conducted by the Centro Studi Confindustria (Study Center Confindustria) for ANICA (National Association of Cinema and Audiovisual Industries), presented yesterday in Rome.
First of all, the report underlines that the sector is a strategic business for the whole country system. In fact, each euro of an additional demand for any Italian audiovisual product and service generates an increase in national production of 1.98 euros. Furthermore, Italian companies are characterized by a good operating profitability thanks to an EBITDA (difference between turnover and costs) of 20%, at the same French level. Labour productivity is definitely above the European average: Italy is third in the continental ranking after Belgium and Germany and before France and the United Kingdom.
In the Italian audiovisual and broadcasting companies 61,000 workers are directly employed, but the Report calculates for the first time also the jobs developed in the connected chains: around 112,000 for a total of 173,000 employees. Francesca Medolago Albani, Strategic Planning Manager for ANICA, highlights how the sector “is characterized by a percentage of female workers of 3 percentage points higher than the national average, 39% instead of 36% of all economic sectors, but also by a 77% incidence of people under the age of 50, 4 percentage points higher than the national average of 73%”.
According to Francesco Rutelli, ANICA President, “epochal changes are going on in our sector and Italy has the skills to deal with them, as emerges from the study. Audiovisual industries demand certainties to the Government and Parliament in order to be able to invest and compete at international level”.
Vincenzo Boccia, Confindustria President reminds that “the audiovisual is a strategic sector for the Italian economy that needs attention and that must face the challenges of the future, which are innovation, digitalisation and investments. The cinema is an industry that produces art”.
“The online video services are making competition harder – told the Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte – and traditional cinema and audiovisual players must face the challenges of the future with confidence and bravery, the Government is ready to support them. The high added value of audiovisual productions makes convenient for the whole Italian system to support this sector “.
The president of the Lazio Region Nicola Zingaretti stated that “with a nearly € 22 Million investment, Lazio is the leading Italian Region in terms of support to cinema and the second one in Europe after Berlin-Brandenburg and before Île-de-France, the Region of Paris”.
Finally, Lucia Borgonzoni, Undersecretary of the Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities announced the opening of a new tax credit window by the end of the month. The news was greeted with applause.
