2000-2020: twenty years without an industrial policy
The speech by Raffaele Lauro, general secretary of Unimpresa
The Italian economy and society are desperately trying to get out of the darkest period since the Second World War. National production this year is in unprecedented decline, estimated at -12%, and the next one is not expected to recover if not a fraction of what was lost. The exclusion from work between the unemployed and the unemployed has reached the limits of tolerability, many companies have had to close their doors and are unlikely to reopen them, incomes are being reduced, outstanding debts are opening chasms in bank balance sheets and public debt is traveling to peaks from which you cannot descend without getting very hurt. The harmful effects of the pandemic have thus been added to the structural deficiencies of a country-system which, in the last twenty years, faced with the challenges of globalization and the European "stakes", without having the capacity to collect the positive stimuli of Union, did not have a shred of industrial policy, coherent, continuous and flexible. A boat in the middle of the waves, without a course, without a rudder, without a helmsman!
TWENTY YEARS WITHOUT AN INDUSTRIAL POLICY
The two Conte governments of this eighteenth republican legislature, paralyzed by contradictory programs, supported by spurious majorities, have not even raised the problem of defining an industrial policy. Furthermore, the current government, overwhelmed by the epidemic emergency, has so far tried to buffer the crisis by resorting to interventions in normal times incompatible with a competitive market economy, launching only buffer measures and revealing a total lack of strategy for exiting the abyss into which we have fallen. In particular, there is a lack of a vision and an “industrial policy” strategy that guides and directs the choices of businesses, families and the public sector towards those factors that drive economic and social development. Instead, there are interventions of pure welfare, which generate interminable dependencies, and only a few fragments of support for some important activities, such as innovation and exports, without a prospective framework for the coming years and without affecting the deep strains that have penalized for years and our country is impoverished.
To face the many challenges of today for a better tomorrow, the political class in its entirety and the members of the executive in office would do well to treasure the book of an expert with a lot of experience, Salvatore Zecchini, entitled "Industrial policy in the Italy of the euro ”, published by Donzelli, recently released in bookstores. This is a voluminous essay on the shortcomings and challenges deriving from the lack of an "industrial policy" in the last twenty years, in which the terms of the problem are analyzed, the foundations of a valid approach are clarified and what has been put in place is sifted through. and implemented by all the governments that followed one another from 2000 to 2020. It is truly unique in the panorama of literature on the subject, as much has been written on individual interventions, but not on all the actions of each individual government, nor on the their interconnections, or inconsistencies.
First of all, the field is cleared of the propaganda beliefs according to which the euro has contributed to the evils of our economy, because the data belie them and the comparison with the other member countries shows that everyone has had to adapt to the monetary union, achieving a different degree of success. It is therefore important that the Author clarified at the beginning how crucial "industrial policy" is to resolve the weaknesses of the system and enhance its strengths in a context of extensive integration into the "single European market", of shared limits between states to their autonomy of economic policy and extraordinary openness to competitors outside the area. This awareness was not present in the actions of past governments for various reasons, including the lack of clarity on the contents of such a policy. It was erroneously believed that incentives and aid to this or that industrial sector were enough to achieve it, while on the contrary it embraces all the nodes of the system, both in manufacturing and in services, because there is a close interdependence between these sectors. The confirmation, for example, can be found in the trends currently underway in the world, in which we are witnessing a "servitization" of the industry, in the sense that its success is increasingly linked to the services it uses before, during and after the production processes.
THE DEVASTATING CONSEQUENCES ON THE SYSTEM AND THE UNRESOLVED NODES
If doing "industrial policy", therefore, means changing the allocation of resources determined by the market to stimulate competitiveness and economic and social growth in a sustainable way over time, it is necessary to define its traits and characteristics in order to be able to assess its adequacy, thereby overcoming the difficulty that experts have encountered in being able to grasp its many ramifications. Of particular importance is the emphasis placed on the regulation of the labor market, on the efficiency of the financial system in providing resources to deserving companies, on the conditions for disseminating research and innovation in the entrepreneurial system and on the environmental context in which companies operate, i.e. justice. civil, bureaucracy, taxation and security. The comparison with the approaches followed in the major developed countries serves to understand the mutual influence that is exerted by the positioning of our country in an international system, in which the actions of others must be taken into account in order to respond to the adverse effects and exploit the favorable ones. The influence and conditioning of the European Union have been more pervasive, which are divided into various branches, in the discipline of state aid and market competition, in external trade policy, in measures for large industries in crisis. , such as the steel industry and shipbuilding, in research and development programs for technological advancement and, more belatedly, in the return of interest in the design of a European-wide industrial policy, to which, moreover, modest funding was allocated. The initiatives in Brussels actually had a fruitful role in stimulating and also guiding our country only in launching sector policies and acquiring an overall vision on what to do.
Against this background, the Author traces the evolution of the production system and identifies a set of key factors on which public intervention would have been necessary to progressively amend the existing weaknesses and to leverage more effectively than in the past on the drivers of potential. of competitiveness and economic growth. These are rightly identified by Zecchini as follows: investment in research and innovation, to be intensified and extended to the entire entrepreneurial fabric, the training of skills in the fields required by the economic system, the internationalization of SMEs and their aggregation to overcome the disadvantages smaller size, the dimensional growth of companies to compete better, access to a multiplicity of sources of financing, the development of business services, from logistics to marketing, fair competition, access to energy at costs comparable to those of foreign competitors, flexibility in work to adapt to the speed of the fourth industrial revolution in progress, the strengthening of tangible and intangible infrastructures, safety on the territory and in the environment, administrative and regulatory simplification and, last but not least, the " governance system of industrial policy from the moment of formulation to the implementation phase action and verification of the results ".
MISSED OPPORTUNITIES: IN 2005/2006 AND IN 2015/2016
How have governments responded to these needs? The analysis is conducted on the basis of the measures taken and actually implemented, with a wealth of data and recalling in-depth studies on the effectiveness of individual interventions. The resulting picture is of disorganized policies, lacking a clear program, fragmentary, uncertain in orientation, in implementation and in the commitment of resources, with poor coordination between central and peripheral authorities, with a mixture of continuity between governments on some fronts and discontinuities on others, together with some reversal: all, finally, hostage to bureaucracy, to complex and ineffective procedures with respect to their purpose, to latent resistances to change and with important gaps. The legislation, also requested by the EU, to foster competition on a level free from preferences and dominant positions failed to come to light, until a couple of years ago and with modest scope: investments in infrastructures were reduced after the momentum impressed in the first half of the 2000s, the tax reduction of business income was marginal, the burden of civil justice on the economy was not at all alleviated, the insecurity in the territory and the embezzlement of resources were not significantly attacked . Often the long delays in translating new interventions into reality have compromised their usefulness. On some fronts, however, progress has been made that could produce positive results in the long run: for example, the establishment and tasks of the independent sector authorities, the creation of the energy market, the launch of the network contract for the aggregation of SMEs, the plan to support the transition to Industry 4.0 and that for the digitalization of the country, the legislation for equitycrowdfunding.
Only on two occasions have governments attempted to enact a coherent, albeit partial, industrial policy program: once, in 2005-2006, and a second time ten years later. In the first case, of which the writer was a direct witness in the responsibility of head of the Cabinet of the Mise, differences within the Berlusconi government, rivalry and protagonism of some ministers (Tremonti and Scajola) prevented the approval and execution. In the second case, in the period following the launch of various incentives for investment in research and innovation, these in the last part of the legislature were belatedly integrated into the Enterprise 4.0 program. Two missed opportunities!
THE FUTURE ECONOMY AND THE FOURTH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AFTER THE PANDEMIC CHOC
The Author concludes the extensive investigation and the field feedback with indications for improving the approach followed so far. In particular, he hopes for a change in the policy paradigm in the sense of moving towards an industrial policy that is "functional" to the evolution of the production system, in the sense indicated by the technological revolution in progress. A policy supported in particular by interventions for the strengthening of strategic infrastructures and to improve the context conditions for the company. In short, a policy that helps to lead the economy and not just industry into the "fourth industrial revolution", hinging above all on the realization of the knowledge economy through innovation, research, infrastructures and extensive training radius. A holistic program is envisaged that focuses on a few axes, among which it identifies support for entrepreneurship, a broader articulation of the financial system, the formation of a managerial class capable of managing change and the reform of institutions relevant to the economy: from civil justice to public procurement and contracts, to the excesses of standardization and regulation, as well as to the dysfunctions of the public administration. With a similar approach, after the pandemic shock, the old dichotomies between horizontal and vertical measures, between defensive and strategic, between entrepreneur state and regulator state, between promoter state and facilitator state would be overcome. All the tools should be put in place, but in an organic and coherent program in which each action has its justification in a tight logic. Given the breadth of the challenge, the Author rightly asks himself, and the writer with him, if his are simply unrealistic indications or if there are margins and skills to achieve them to some extent, during this unfortunate legislature and with the government currently in charge. In other words, whether this legislature should be considered, after twenty years of disappointed expectations, definitively lost for the purposes of defining an industrial policy worthy of the name, or whether the current political leadership, unfortunately dominated so far by confusion and inconsistency management, is able to face and resolve the age-old question. Exigua his tribuenda fides, here fine loquuntur!
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/2000-2020-un-ventennio-senza-una-politica-industriale/ on Thu, 27 Aug 2020 05:20:43 +0000.