The South grows at the pace of the Chinese Golden Age which could unify Italy

I’ve been in Catania for less than a month. “It was a stop on our Central Bank’s trip to Italy dedicated to verification in the field.”The pulse of the southern economy“I was asked to lead the work before Governor Fabio Panetta intervened, and I met him there Giuseppe Notarnicolapresident ST Microelectronics ItalyWhich means 10 billion investments in Italy, including 6 in eastern Sicily. Visiting the Catania factory in the afternoon and listening to details of the new project be explained gave me the distinct feeling that I had entered the land of the future. I realize that for the Italian-French multinational semiconductor company, the production of new chips and, above all, the construction of the world’s first integrated silicon carbide plant, represents a critical challenge.

Last Friday on the train, on my way back from Milan to Rome, I met Notarnicola again by chance. He looks at me and says: In the coming years southern Italy could grow at the pace of China’s golden age. Even my rational optimism was surprised, but I immediately knew he wasn’t joking, he was serious. He adds: In fact, we must make it understood by all Italians, and the entire productive world must understand it. Myopia and selfishness must give way to an organic development plan that will allow Milan to survive and consolidate itself among the major global cities, overtaking for example Paris, London, Naples, and the entire South behind them, and becoming another major global city in Milan. The capital of another large development area is the southern region.

Behind these words, there is a logic that I know well that points to the real opportunity that the combination of two elements offers. The first is the exploitation, only possible here, of the new strategic position to attract international capital. It derives from the rediscovered centrality of the south-north axis and from the indisputable fact that it is the only platform extending across the Mediterranean. It was Putin’s tanks that broke the strings of the East-West axis that gave Germany cheap gas and transferred this competitive advantage to the crown states in the northern region and, indirectly, to its Italian suppliers. Now the new dominant axis has moved elsewhere, and between the open powder keg in Africa and the expanding conflict in the Middle East, it is the Italian south in particular, of all the global south, that offers the greatest guarantees of security, organization and stability to benefit from the innovative energies of tomorrow and the past. Which is its own, and thus serves as a bridge between the boiling Mediterranean and Europe.

The second element is related to the unique opportunity that southern Italy has today to spend European money well, as it is doing now, which has reached an extent never seen before to create those tangible and intangible infrastructures that are changing the country’s competitiveness. regions and enhance the legacy of talent already produced by the major universities of the South and waiting to be traded into the network of the future. The reforms of the public investment machine and the unified management of European funds together with the new single special economic zone constitute a tremendous asset so that we do not miss this historic opportunity.

When thinking of Notarnicola’s persuasive and insistent words, a passage from the governor’s speech in Catania that refers to the season of extraordinary intervention comes to mind. It is argued that with a large amount of financial resources equivalent to 2% of GDP and a preference for interventions in infrastructure and large industrial facilities with public participation, the per capita GDP in the south compared to that in the center and the north has increased by 50%. % from the late 1950s to 60% since the late 1960s. In the first place, it occurred to me that the Governor himself confirmed shortly thereafter that the total funding available to the South in the current decade was estimated at about 5% of the South’s GDP each year and that the Infrastructure Budget Fund was capable of adding more. Not exactly broscoli. It is possible to repeat the miracle if you are able to prepare yourself in time.

Because if it gives me a lot, it is not difficult to understand that all the conditions exist, as the cases of the new investments of STM in Catania and the multinational pharmaceutical company Novartis in Torre Annunziata teach us, for the Italian south to become concretely the new El Dorado of global capital by attracting resources Finance and creating productive work.

Above all, this will happen if the country is able, on the one hand, to sell the great financial advantage, contribution and financial advantage to the world through the single Special Economic Zone (ZES) that now concerns the entire South, and on the other hand. If Southern class politics began to think in terms of a culture of doing things together, of communicating productively with the government and with each other, it would have the power to eliminate inefficient bureaucracy and malfeasance.

This is the real wall that needs to be torn down to give our children a good future at home. In the meantime, let us take comfort that the international community of STM managers, meeting in Geneva, judged the silicon carbide project in Catania as the most important in 2024. Because it was considered the potentially more competitive investment. It’s not a little.