Agricultural companies are looking for lenders and are asking banks to be on their side. They challenge sustainable agri-food exports and want to affirm the Italian ability to know how to stay within the global food system. Growth forecasts are good because the crisis due to the pandemic is diluting in new international competitionsthe. "For the agri-food sector, the current year could end with a record level of 50 billion euros of Made in Italy products destined for foreign markets", he says Massimiliano Giansanti, President of Confagriculture. “For this reason it is essential to set up, in a new logic, the relationships between finance, credit and companies in the sector”. The words of the leader of Confagricoltura must be carefully evaluated also in the perspective of public aid. The point is where to start in order to make banking operations accessible and transparent to help Italian agriculture grow more.
On the one hand, farms are preparing to receive aid from the PNRR and those of European policy 2023-2027; on the other hand, the whole chain of sustainability, of green agriculture, needs other resources. There is also a need to train young farmers which are gradually growing. Prime Minister Mario Draghi and the Minister of Development Stefano Patuanelli, in the wake of the work set up at the time by the former owner of Agriculture, Teresa Bellanova, continued with tenders and subsidized credits to encourage the management of companies. We need to go back to planning development and investing: it is the new frontier of competitiveness. Improving relations with the financial and banking system, reducing a certain information asymmetry on loans and trust towards businesses to broaden the company's horizons to all forms of financing, is a strategic operation for the next few years.
In this regard, it must be said that the good ideas of the farmers will have to be linked concretely with the government's guidelines, in particular for the implications with the green transition. To mention just one aspect, financing the abandonment of polluting fuels and photovoltaic installations for zero impact products is becoming a priority. Where goods from non-environmentally friendly supply chains continue to enter international markets. We, explains Giansanti, aim at training. From a first course carried out in collaboration with the ENAPRA training body, 20 specialized professional figures have already emerged who are able to evaluate the present and future capacity of companies, for everything concerning the financial part of a company. The banks now have the task of not neglecting that business estimated at 50 billion euros. Made in Italy and sustainable.
