«Without trust there are no investments. Without investment there is no competitiveness and productivity and therefore, ultimately, no work. And then the Republic founded on work no longer holds. This risks bringing the troika into the house, certainly not the Month, which instead we need quickly», analyzes Luciano Vescovi, president of Confindustria Vicenza, one of the most important industrial realities of Italian manufacturing.
The numbers emerging for the Vicenza economy are devastating. In the midst of this prairie of "minus signs", which are the most significant ones?
“The ones yet to come, the second-quarter ones. It should be noted that in the first quarter we had a drop in production of almost 9% when essentially the actual lockdown lasted only a week, even if the effects of Covid on the perception of Italian goods on international markets created real problems as early as end of February, from the first case of Codogno ».
For over twenty years, Venetian journalists, usually in the vicinity of financial manoeuvres, have asked entrepreneurs for a list of priorities to be submitted to the government. Today the situation is quite different: what are you asking the Government to restart industrial production?
“Let us work in peace. Don't get confused, eliminate "the cards" as much as possible, i.e. the bureaucracy. Give us a few simple rules and then check, ex post, if we respect them. If we have to fill out 19 forms to apply for a subsidized bank loan… we might as well request it without subsidies, it costs us less».
In addition to non-repayable incentives, interventions on the capital of companies are also hypothesized. The burning urgency for corporate finance?
«First of all, but certainly not because of Covid, that the PA pays its debts to Italian companies. We're talking billions. And then that there are automatisms on liquidity. In this sense, even if temporary, the removal of the Irap is good. And then we need to relaunch the Industry 4.0 plan and the subsidies for research and development. You have to think and be competitive to restart, only parrying the blow means only postponing the problems until a later time».
