Assopopolari defends what the popular banks have done in recent years to support growth in the Mezzogiorno after the attacks received in recent months due to what happened to Popolare di Bari.
The association led by Giuseppe De Lucia Lumeno presents an analysis of the activities of cooperative banks to support southern Italy. A work carried out to demonstrate how "a crisis situation" cannot "obfuscate the real and enormous support of the popular banking system for the economy of southern Italy".
According to the association's study, over the past ten years, loans to working-class companies based in the South have grown by 14% (three times what the system did) with flows of new loans to SMEs amounting to 115 billion euro and 39 to households for mortgages. In 2019 alone, loans exceeded 25 billion euros and deposits exceeded 24 billion.
“Results made possible also thanks to a widespread presence on the territory with almost 1.000 branches (the only credit reference in 80 Southern Municipalities)”, explains Assopopolari.
Important data that must be included in a twenty-year context characterized by a drop in investments in the South of over 30%.
In presenting the publication, the Secretary General of Assopopolari, Giuseppe De Lucia Lumeno, underlines “the important results which cannot be ignored or underestimated and which are the result of the ability to concentrate activity in the reference areas by re-employing savings where they are collected. The task of the Popolari in the South therefore remains essential in order not to disperse that heritage of entrepreneurship which, in difficult conditions, has managed to survive and develop in the southern regions. Only in this way will it be possible to reduce the gap with the Centre-North and conquer a new growth path for the whole country".
