Crime has a highly negative impact on the image of a country and consequently on the foreign investments it manages to attract. This is what the Governor of the Bank of Italy Ignazio Visco said when speaking at the conference "Fighting the criminal economy, a precondition for economic growth" organized by the Bank of Italy in Milan.
“Crime has a negative effect on investment in general and foreign direct investment in particular – said Visco -. Using the Doing Business indicator, which provides a summary of the quality of the institutional environment, and considering the degree of criminal penetration in the territory, it has been estimated that, other conditions being equal, if Italian institutions had been qualitatively similar to those of the euro area, between 2006 and 2012 foreign investment flows in Italy would have been 15 per cent higher – almost 16 billion euro – than the direct investments actually attracted in the period”.
