Like all other countries Italy is weathering the banking storm, while the European Central Bank raises interest rates by half a percentage point, to 3.5%. This increase will be challenging for a country with a debt to GDP of 160%.

Ignazio Visco, Italy’s Central Bank governor, believes that Italy will hold up to rate hikes and that inflation won’t last long. Core inflation, excluding energy and fresh food, increased to 6%.

“Politics needs to regain control over the financial leviathan”, declares Giulio Tremonti in an interview with Il Sole 24 Ore, a business daily. He is Chairman of the Senate Foreign Affair Committee, former Minister of Finance and current President of Aspen Italia. «At the basis of everything there is a historical error: we have passed from the phase of austerity to that of liquidity», he concludes.

Italy’s government is hypothesising a fiscal reform to benefit the cluster of yearly Euro15.000 – 28.000 gross salaries, introducing three rates – 23%, 35%, 43%, vs the current four.

The Government approved the construction of the bridge that will connect the tip of the peninsula, Calabria, to Sicily. This US$ 4.5 billion project has been the bone of contention since Italy’s unification in 1861 and even more so in the last 20 years.

The government and the two regions – Calabria and Sicily--, this time around, appear to be aligned. It will be a 2-mile single span bridge.

With the ambition to align the industrial sector with environmental objectives, the European Commission yesterday presented a legislative act, the Net-Zero Industry Act, with which it intends to promote the production of clean technologies: 40% of green technologies will have to be produced in Europe by 2030.

Drought in Italy. US$ 7 billion a year is needed to manage this challenge, Currently, the utilities guarantee up to US$ 4.4 billion annually.

Rome. In light of the Jubilee and Expo 2023, US$ 120 million will be invested to provide the capital with 5G, Wi-Fi and IOT, declared Rome’s mayor Roberto Gualtieri.

“Niki Lauda” Tower in Dubai is the latest entrepreneurial initiative of the Preatoni Group, a leading Italy based contraction group. Named after the Formula 1 iconic driver, it will be a 26-story skyscraper. A US$ 45 to be completed between February

and March 2026.

NEWEST Newsletter, March 18 2023

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