Suchergebnisse

WITHIN the past year, the Italian government has revealed a ten-year program, known as the Vanoni Plan, for the development of the Italian economy. By the investment of $56 billion, the government hopes to conquer the problem of chronic unemployment and to revitalize the laggard southern regionof the country. The plan is a bold and imaginative one, replete with government controls, and probably too optimistic. Nonetheless, it has forcefully drawn international attention to Italy's basic economic problems. Hence it is opportune to examine those problems against the perspective of what has been attained by the Italian economy in the past ten years.Compared with northwest Europe, Italy has always been economically poor. Capital is much scarcer and the endowment of natural resources is much less favorable. Deposits of coal and metallic minerals are negligible or lacking, though natural gas production is growing and petroleum has recently been discovered. Arable land is poor in average quality. Only 1.78 hectares areavailable per person engaged in agriculture, one-third less than in France, while total arableland is one-quarter below France although the population of Italy is 10 per cent larger (47.1 million in 1951).