20 Novembre 2012
“A growing bilateral partnership between Italy and UAE: from the focus on foreign trade to the focus on investments and joint ventures”
20 November 2012
Your excellences Minister of Economy Sultan Al Mansouri and Chairman of the Chamber of Commerce Abdulrahman Saif Al Ghurair, ladies and gentlemen, let me say how happy I am to be in this dynamic and spectacular city today.
I will say a few words on the situation of the euro area and of Italy before moving on to the subject of the conference - as I'm sure this may be playing on your mind.
The euro area is overcoming its crisis. More than a currency the euro is a symbol of European integration that European governments are determined to preserve and strengthen.
In the last six months we have stabilized financial markets by implementing a powerful and permanent rescue fund, the European Stability Mechanism. The European Central Bank, for its part, has put in place a bond buying programme to ensure governments' financing costs reflect their economic fundamentals and reform efforts. Next month we will adopt a concrete roadmap to reinforce the architecture of our Economic and Monetary Union starting with a single supervision mechanism for banks to make sure we spot and deal with problems earlier in the future.
Governments are reducing budget deficits where they were inflated by the bursting of a housing bubble or the need to recapitalize systemic banks, or both, following the fall of Lehman Brothers in 2008 and the ensuing recession. Italy was not afflicted by any of these evils, but as the financing costs increased significantly my government in the last 12 months moved swiftly to bring the country to safe ground by putting the debt on a descending trajectory and enhancing the business environment.
I am convinced the budgetary consolidation and reform efforts going on in the euro area as well as the reinforcement of the EMU architecture will see us emerging stronger soon. With a budget deficit below 3% this year and structural balance next year, which means a primary surplus of around 5%, Italy's public finances are healthy. The same can be said of the euro area aggregate figures. Compare, for example, with the situation in the UK, the US or Japan. The markets have started to notice and are coming back to Italy.
