Foreign investments in Tuscany amount to over 9 billion euros, making up 8.6 percent of the regional GDP and 3.5 of all direct foreign investments in our country. There is a prevalent attention for financial services but also relevant are the real estate, the oil-chemical and the mechanical sectors. The data, relative to the year 2011, emerged from the research on “regional economies” recently published by Bank of Italy – Eurosystem.
Tuscany ranks sixth among Italian regions in terms of incoming capital after Lombardy, Lazio, Piedmont, Emilia Romagna and Veneto. These six regions combined, total over 90 percent of investments coming form abroad and generate 80 percent of Italian capital committed to foreign initiatives.
The total value of direct Tuscan investments directed abroad brushed the 12 billion euros mark in 2011, in other words 3 percent of the national amount. According to the investigation by Bank of Italy, over the last few years, the amount of Tuscan investments, both outgoing and incoming, suffered a slowdown compared to the national average: the yearly average of the outward flows was 2.7 percent in the 2007-11 period, compared to the national 9.1 percent, while the inward ones dropped, on average, by 4.4 percent, compared to the national 0.6 percent.
For these latter ones the country of origin is, in 90 percent of cases, a member of the European Union, with France and the Netherlands holding the highest shares followed by United Kingdom, Germany and Spain. About 5 percent is represented by the American continent.
The outward flows present a similar scenario, even though the unbalance toward the EU is not as great: two thirds of investments end up in the Old Continent: almost 20 percent are destined to France, while 18 percent lands in Luxembourg – due to a more favorable business tax code. Among non-European markets, the United States stand out with 8 percent and China with 3.
Which sectors attract incoming foreign investments? Financial services and real estate are the two most targeted, topping the national average, respectively reporting 22 and 9 percent of total flows: relevant are also the quotas for the chemical-oil (8.4) mechanics (8) and trade (8) ones.
From the comparisons with national statistics some of the Tuscan excellences emerge as recognized by foreign capital: food and wine, transportation, textiles, wood and paper. In the outward flows, instead, financial services, again, stand out.
“The highest dispersion of inward direct foreign investment among economic sectors compared to the outward ones,” concludes the analysis by Bank of Italy, “seems to show that foreign businesses invest with reference to the specific features of individual target company.”
Source: “Regional Economies” – Tuscany, Bank of Italy- Eurosystem, Luglio, 2013
