The alarm raised by the Bank of Italy on the new maneuver with the hearing in Parliament of Ignazio Visco ("watch out for sales and growth", this newspaper wrote in the comment last Tuesday) must be taken very seriously. The overall entity of the cost adjustment cannot be reduced – is the argument of the Deputy Director of Via Nazionale – but it is also necessary to associate the rebalancing «an economic policy aimed at relaunching the growth prospects of our economy». Yep, growth. That anemic of its own (around 1% for years) is continually being revised downwards: most recently, with the IMF's estimates at the beginning of the week (0,8 and 0,7% for 2001-2012).
It's a bit like saying that it rains in the wet. Can this bad news be said to be totally unexpected? No, if we look at a couple of popular indicators that anticipate the economic situation, such as the "€-coin" of the Bank of Italy and the preliminary estimate service "Now Casting" by Lucrezia Reichlin et al. The former dropped markedly in August: in fact, the €-coin fell to 0,22% (from 0,45 in July), accentuating the drop recorded in the previous two months (it was still around 0,60 in spring); the second signaled a slowdown in the economy as early as May. If we move to Germany we notice how the IFO index – the main German business confidence index – dropped by 4,2 points in the August survey, which is the largest drop since November 2008.
And so we could continue by reviewing other qualitative and quantitative indicators. However, it would not change the substance of the discussion which is that of a general retreat of the European economies. So what autumn awaits us? The autumn of our discontent? Of course, the difficulties that materialized in the second quarter of the year also for the German economy (see the "Direct Line" by Franco Locatelli with Paolo Onofri of Prometeia, “First on Line”, 16/08/2011) pose many problems for the near future of our industry. We must not forget that Germany is our main commercial partner, and that the extraordinary strength of the large German companies active on the new Asian markets sets in motion many Italian productions along the supply chain (primarily in the mechanical engineering sector).
If we combine this with the by now historic structural weaknesses of our production system, the picture that emerges is far from rosy. But the advantage of companies that are exposed to international competition - and Italian manufacturing falls into this category - is that they don't easily raise the white flag: on the contrary, they try to compete with all their might on global markets, and not accidentally the results for the made in Italy they are not lacking, even in very recent times. Now, in a country that is confronted with this situation, two facts arouse wonder: we can call the first "of thought", the second "of policy". Let's see them briefly. The first tells us that in the public discourse the question of the competitiveness of our industry has indeed gained some position compared to the years of lavish praise of the paper economy, but it is still not the fundamental question it should be.
It is a bit the entire ruling class of the country (including the academic world) that bears the responsibility: for many years - if not decades - manufacturing was no longer in fashion and very few voices were raised to oppose it, first of all from the point from a cultural point of view, this colossal blunder. The financial crash of 2008 seemed to have revived the "real" economy, but at the end of the day more in words than in deeds. Thus we are led to the second question, the one that has to do with public policies. Three years after the crash and the demonstration that without a strong manufacturing industry the growth of a country cannot be built on solid foundations, after three years - we said - there is not even the faintest implementation of a concerted national industrial policy with the EU.
Alas, the decree for the correction of the Ferragosto accounts and its new version released by Arcore do not escape the rule. Can a country like Italy, which, as the Confindustria Study Center points out, is the second largest manufacturer in Europe and among the very first in the world, afford this total forgetfulness? Growth policies – as has been noted in many quarters – represent the great absence of this manoeuvre. And it should not be forgotten that pro-growth policies include industrial policies: the new and modern ones, which have three of the most authoritative proponents in Dani Rodrik, Philippe Aghion and Ha-Joon Chang (and we are talking about three top-level economists international). And if you really don't like the expression because it brings to mind the industrial policies by sector of the 70s and 80s (that «picking the winner» of not exactly brilliant memory), you can always opt for an expression like the one used in an official document of his from the German federal government in 2010: «Ideas. Innovation. Prosperity. The High-Tech Strategy 2020 for Germany».
The approach is not for individual sectors but for five 'key technologies': climate/energy; health/nutrition; mobility; safety; communication. Would a wealth tax on great wealth to fund such a scheme have been out of this world? We really think not, especially since there was the precedent of «Industria 2015» wanted by the Prodi government in 2006 to be taken up and developed, not abandoned. Also from Germany comes the experience of the great scientific societies, among which the two best known: Max Planck and Frauenhofer. Our situation, by contrast, could hardly be more irrational. Let us give just two examples. At the local level, we continue to have twenty (fragmented) regional industrial policies, each with its own technology transfer bodies, as well as thousands of public companies with regional, provincial and municipal participation operating in various fields of the economy: the sum of the first draws up an all-round national industrial policy to be enforced also on the tables in Brussels; the latter would go to no small extent privatized both to recover precious resources and to try to put an end to the business-political mix that is raging in the country.
At the national level - we are at the second example - we continue to have bodies such as the Cnel for which the maneuver decreed only a modest cut, while Nicola Rossi's proposal for its abolition is much more decisive and rigorous ("Corriere della Sera" , August 20). And the examples could go on. In conclusion, the categorical imperative should be to concentrate resources in large strategic projects for the formation of human and physical capital, uniting in this effort the resources currently absorbed - either at a national or local level - by the now irrational ( and outdated by the times) institutions, laws and societies mentioned above; or, at least to begin with, some of them. The Italian manufacturing industry and related service activities exposed to competition would be the first to benefit, and therefore the country's economic growth.
On closer inspection, young people would be the main recipients of a large applied research and technology transfer project conducted in partnership between the central state and the regions within the ambit of community policies (think also of "Europe 2020"). Giving some hope and instilling confidence in the future remain, after all, the first ingredients to avert the season – autumn or winter – of our discontent.
