The photograph of online sales abroad overturns the economic gap between Northern and Southern Italy. Small and medium-sized businesses in the South surprisingly conquer eBay’s digital export record, somehow managing to compensate for the historic poverty of the Southern industrial fabric.
This is underlined in a new report from the e-commerce giant Small Business Activities in Italyin which the top six Italian regions for “digital density” are all in the South: Campania, Abruzzo, Puglia, Basilicata, Calabria and Sicily.
The eBay report
“Digital density” is the parameter developed by eBay to track entrepreneurial dynamism in different areas of the 190 countries in which the marketplace operates, through 2.4 billion listings and 134 million active buyers.
As explained by the company’s senior vice president and chief legal officer, Samantha Wellington, the indicator is used as a reference meter of sellers’ online activity, relating the total value of transactions to a population of 100 thousand inhabitants.
From this data, the vitality in the online exports of SMEs in the South emerges surprisingly, as they overcome the obstacles and chasms of the economic underdevelopment of the South, managing to connect directly with the rest of the world.
The result is a reverse scenario, in which a region like Campania, first for unemployment rate in the European Union, second for percentage of population at risk of poverty or social exclusion (Arope) and third to last for GDP per capita in the EU, is at the top of the export rankings on eBay and at the top in Europe.
Followed in the ranking are five other southern regions which occupy the last places on the continent among the Nuts2 areas surveyed by Eurostat. An example are Calabria and Sicily, first and third in the Arope rankings and fifth and sixth in digital density.
- Campania – 44.4% population at risk of poverty (2nd in the EU), 17.4% unemployment (1st in the EU), 19th for GDP per capita
- Abruzzo – 28.6% population at risk of poverty (6th in the EU), 8% unemployment (7th in the EU), 15th for GDP per capita
- Puglia – 32.2% population at risk of poverty (5th), 11.6% unemployment (4th), 18th for GDP per capita
- Basilicata – 27.3% population at risk of poverty (7th), 7.5% unemployment (8th), 13th for GDP per capita
- Calabria – 48.6% population at risk of poverty (1st), 15.9% unemployment (2nd), 21st for GDP per capita
- Sicily – 41.4% population at risk of poverty (3rd), 15.8% unemployment (3rd), 20th for GDP per capita
The export of Italian SMEs
A ranking which, according to eBay’s analysis, would prove that the possibilities provided by e-commerce are not the prerogative of the richest areas or which host the most developed technological hubs, but rather are exploited more in territories where the traditional economy is backward.
The report finds that in general in Italy 95% of small and medium-sized businesses active on eBay are engaged in exports, compared to 4.2% of all companies in the country, reaching on average 15 markets around the world (compared to 6 of the traditional average) and over a quarter of the SMEs registered on the marketplace have exported to at least four continents.
