Italian company closures rising in 2014

A new study shows that about 180,000 firms shut down in Italy in the first ten months of 2014 as the country continues to struggle with recession, Press TV reports.

The study, conducted by Italy’s General Confederation of Enterprises, Professions and Self-Employment, Confcommercio, reveals that the number of the Italian companies closing down in the current year has risen, with an average of 600 per day.

Experts believe that Italian companies are suffering from the lack of liquidity and heavy fiscal pressure.

Small and medium businesses have for months called on the government to reduce tax pressure and introduce growth-boosting measures.

“In the first ten months of this year, we recorded 100,000 new companies, while about 180,000 closed down. Very often, the rigid EU (European Union) regulations are seen as the cause of this situation. However, successive governments in Italy have failed to reform our heavy tax system,” Mariano Bella, an economic analyst, told Press TV.

This comes as global marketing research firm Nielsen has said the volume of large-scale retail trade in Italy fell by over 5 percent in the first two weeks of December. Large retailers’ overall profits went down by more than 2 percent since January this year.

“Unfortunately, the pressure on large-scale retailers is high. The crisis continues to bite hard and profits keep going down compared to last year,” said Giancarlo Di Loreto, a supermarket director.

Italy started to experience recession when its economy contracted by 0.2 percent in the third quarter of 2011 and by 0.7 percent in the year’s fourth quarter.

The worsening debt crisis across the EU has compelled many governments, including the Italian government, to adopt harsh austerity measures and tough economic reforms, which have triggered incidents of social unrest and massive protests in many European countries.