(Finance) – “Bureaucracy, Zes, South, Southern Decree, all topics that interest the Asi and the economic development of our country, in particular the South”. These – he explains Luigi Barone, Ficei spokesperson and ASI president of the Province of Benevento – the themes at the center of the opening stage of the national seminar of Industrial Consortia “Sud Invest: the competitiveness of the Asi Consortia for territorial development”, promoted by the ASI (Industrial Development Area) of Benevento and by the Ficei (Italian Federation of Industrialization Consortiums and Bodies). “The ASI Consortia – he continues Baron – can make an important contribution to the development of territories. In our agglomerations we have the main companies: Stellantis, Leonardo, Nestlé, the entire pharmaceutical sector. For us, therefore, economic development is something important compared to what can be created on the employment front. Our themes are those linked to the world of development, business and industry”.
Are the resources for the Pnrr an opportunity to reduce the gap with the North?
“Absolutely yes, but unfortunately for months we have been fighting with the Government and with some ministries because strangely we have been excluded from implementing and benefiting from the resources of the PNRR. This despite a state law from the 1970s delegating strategic functions to us in the field of purification, sewerage, roads. So on the one hand we have a State delegation for these functions and on the other they have excluded us from the PNRR: we, through our offices, have great capabilities and skills for the development of projects and also for accessing funding and, given the difficulties in spending the resources foreseen by the plan, in my opinion this is a serious mistake. We are continually asking the government, and we will repeat it today in these four days, to modify the rule and allow the Asi to be beneficiaries” .
What will the establishment of a ‘single SEZ for the South’ (Special Economic Zone for the South) entail?
“We, as the Asi and Ficei consortia, were in favor of the expansion of the SEZ, however the single SEZ, conceived as decided by Minister Fitto and the government – the decree was published yesterday – does not convince us at all. In the other countries where the zones francs have worked – starting with China in the late 1970s, passing through Poland, Belarus and other countries – there are no such extensive SEZs, there are depressed portions of territory that have had these benefits to attract investors. Thinking of creating a single SEZ and confusing the metropolitan and more developed areas with the depressed ones I don’t think is a good thing. Then there is the whole problem linked to centralization, to the single authorization headed by the cohesion department. We will fight on this issue: a procedure that involves several steps, with the approval of the single authorization of the smallest country in the South which must pass from Palazzo Chigi to the Cohesion department, it does not seem to me to be a simplification procedure, far from it”.