Ferrara While the others run, in Ferrara it slowly retreats. The picture that the CGIA of Mestre takes of the provincial economy in comparison with the rest of Italy is merciless. Ferrara is one of the eight capitals in which the gross domestic product has even worsened compared to pre-Covid years with a percentage of -0,2%. Together with her there are Terni, Potenza, Belluno, Siena, Genoa, Frosinone and Florence. In 2025, however, GDP grew by just 0.1% and even in this case only seven other Italian capitals did the same or even had no growth.
This only confirms the enormous difficulties in the Ferrara production sectoralready historically at the bottom of the list in the region as can also be seen from the current situation GDP per inhabitant which stops at 31.120 euroalso behind that of Ravenna (39,804 euros) and Rimini (37,405 euros). The remaining capitals of the region instead exceed 40 thousand euros and Bologna even exceeds 50 thousand.
He’s not paying therefore the municipal administration’s choice to focus heavily on turismohowever rising, to try to give a positive impulse to the economy. In fact, we are talking about a sector which, due to its intrinsic characteristics, creates little development and whose productivity has clear structural limits. Simply put, structures such as hotels, bathing establishments or restaurants tend to have little margin to increase rooms, umbrellas or tables to serve. Also in this area wages tend to remain low and stagnant and all these heavy constraints are also partly present in another predominant sector in the Ferrara economy, namely the agricultural one.
In Europe and Italy
As the CGIA always reports «between 2019 and 2025 our real GDP increased by 6.4%, in France it increased by 5% and in Germany by 0.2%. Only Spain – the research continues – can count on a positive variation greater than ours which has reached 10%. The average of the Euro Area countries stood at +6.2%”. Among the Italian regions, the one that saw its GDP increase the most in the post-Covid years was Sicily with +10.9% followed by Lombardy (+9%) and Puglia (+8.9%). «Syracuse presents the most important positive variation – explains the association – with a real GDP increased by 44.7%. Followed by Caltanissetta (+13, 5), Milan (+12.9), Taranto (+12.6) and Teramo (+12.1)”.
Little credit
If on the one hand the Ferrara economy is retreating due to the well-known structural deficiencies, on the other also business credit doesn’t help. According to data from the Bank of Italy in the first six months of 2025 the provincial territory saw a contraction of disbursements which reached -5% with as many as 115 million euros that the banks preferred to keep in their deposits or use them in another way. Needless to say, this is the worst percentage among the capitals of Emilia Romagna, even if decreases in the credit granted were also noted in the provinces of Bologna, Ravenna, Parma and Reggio Emilia.
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