Economy of Sicily

What about the economy in our next country? Well, I’ll tell you something more about it.

Sicily is the eight richest region in terms of total GDP, because of the regular growth of the last years. You can see this evolution in the in the table below. In the 70s there was a growth of the industrial sector through the creation of some factories. In recent years, the importance of service industry has grown for the opening of several shopping malls and for a modest growth of financial and telecommunication activities.

	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	2008
Gross Domestic Product (Millions of Euros)	67,204	70,530	72,855	75,085	77,327	80,358	82,938	88,328
GDP (PPP) per capita (Euro)	13,479	14,185	14,662	15,053	15,440	16,023	16,531	17,533

Today Sicily is investing a huge amount of money on structures of the hospitality industry, in order to make tourism more competitive. With an unemployment rate of 14%, Sicily has one of the highest unemployment rates in Italy. This difference is mostly caused by the negative influence of Mafia that is still active in some areas although it is much weaker than in the past.

From figures, we can deduce that Sicily is especially agricultural. Three-quarters of the land is used for agriculture and is still now agricultural. 11% of the Sicilians are employed here. In the 1950s was this about 50%. The rest center on particular services, construction and industry. Around 11% of the population works in agriculture.

A large part of it is used for fruit growing:

•           60% of the oranges and tangerines
•            90% of the lemons of Italy
•           50% of which are from the Etna area - come from Sicily.
•           9 million hectoliters of wine

What is weird is that these intense figures of Sicily, with an unemployment rate of 14 %, still has one of the highest unemployment rate in Italy.

Nowadays, much of the agricultural land is still used inefficiently. For what reasons do you think why much of the agricultural land is used inefficient? Well, here they are:

•           The climatic conditions in the interior of the island
•           The uneven distribution of land

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicily#Economy

http://www.zainoo.com/en/italy/sicily/economy