A discourse provided by the Manager of the Bank of Italy helps understand where Italian companies are located and what problems need solving

 

 Awareness. If we were to indicate a “key word” for Italian companies – and for those who work there at all levels -, perhaps this would be precisely the most suitable word. Companies that are aware of the context in which they operate. It is a matter of culture (business culture, indeed), but also of an ability to analyse the surrounding environment. It is useful better to plan the activity and the development of production. In such complex times as these, help comes in the form of a discourse provided by the General Manager of the Bank of Italy, Salvatore Rossi, who at the “Forum Annuale Media Impresa Italiana” (Medium-Sized Italian Company Annual Forum) a few days ago addressed the theme of “What does the Italian economy know, and what does it need to do”.

Rossi – as usual – deals lucidly with a difficult topic, starting with the observation that in recent years our economy has failed to keep up with other economies. Why is this? Rossi explains: “To explain this gap, we cannot bring up considerations linked to ‘demand'”; the problem is quite different, and it is connected to “supply”. The Manager of the Bank of Italy goes on to say: “Companies naturally do not live in a pneumatic vacuum, they are immersed in a human environment and an institutional framework made up of work, politics, laws, regulations and much more. Their abilities and their choices are influenced and shaped by them”.

Having said this, Rossi goes into an exact description – but absolutely understandable – of the production structure of Italian companies, their difficulties in achieving research and development, the problems they experience in relation to growth and to the aggregation of smaller concerns, the hindrance of public intervention in the economy, the (long) list of things to resolve, the complicated relationship between companies and the credit system.

Rossi takes the reader on a short but intense journey. A journey that however provides the elements that serve better to understand the present. And it is above all a journey that strives to look not only at the obstacles along the way, but also at the positive peculiarities that our economy, and therefore our manufacturing system, still has in full.

Rossi concludes: “The Italian economy has lost its footing in the developed world over the past twenty years, but it still has plenty of lead in its pencil. It can resume the path towards economic development and widespread welfare provided that its manufacturing system achieves a leap in quality, with many more businesses moving towards dimensions and organisational structures suitable for riding the wave of technology. For those companies to have an incentive to do so, the entire country must equip itself with modern infrastructure, both tangible and intangible, starting with the legal system”.