Pasqualino Monti0:29
I was appointed by the President of the Council, Draghi, as Extraordinary Commissioner for the safety of the 150,000-ton dry dock, which allows Fincantieri, alongside the one we finished building in 2019, to construct naval units. We closed a broader agreement with cruise companies, in particular with one for the construction of five ships, 170 meters each, in Palermo. Evidently, that work becomes decisive because it rebuilds the supply chain: it goes from a yard that only did maintenance to a yard that does construction. This says a lot. Grimaldi, for example, extended two ships in Palermo. So clearly, the work we have done in the last four years has allowed that yard to become a productive yard. Now they give me 81 million, but I don't have them. So I am a president appointed a year and a half ago without funds, without resources. Why? Because the implementation of that decree passes through the secret rooms of the Ministry of Economy and Finance, it is bounced between the MIT (former MIMS) and the Ministry of Economy and Finance. After a year and a half, a regulation must be prepared, it goes through Parliament, a regulation that the decree law 68, and finally in December, only in December of this year, in the budget law, they will include the 81 million that will allow me next year to build that dry dock. This says a lot about the state of bureaucracy in Italy. Simplification for us, I think, must be tackled as a priority by the government, evidently.
Look, I could give you many examples. In 2017, I arrived in Sicily, in Porto Empedocle. We had filed with the Ministry of the Environment the authorizations for the regasification plant. Now, the classifiers: Porto Empedocle was not as famous as it is today. Evidently because at that time no one was talking about the war in Ukraine, there was no inflation, so the gas problem did not exist. We, with foresight, given that the country at that time produced 3 billion cubic meters of gas and consumed 76, thought instead that it was an infrastructure to explain to local communities, but a strategic infrastructure. So, eight years at the Ministry of the Environment to get a clearance. Eight years! After that, you get to 2019 and they bounce it back to you again because they say, 'No, look, maybe we made a mistake, because since you have to do an additional procedure, we have to go back to the commission via VIA and VAS.' So another two years pass, we get to 2021. Evidently, this year, 2022, and then accelerations happen because our country, when it has to face emergencies, finds a way to do it. I could say the same for Gela. We have off the coast of Gela, 65 miles from the port of Gela, two fields: Cass Arg and Cassiopea, which Eni has to drill to extract gas. The environmental permit lasted, if I'm not mistaken, 10 years. We have now come to have the port of Gela in the Port System Authority, and thank God there is the Port System Authority, otherwise those drillings would never have started because the logistics were missing, the yards to give to Eni to allow the construction of the offshore. So, evidently...
These are topics we can discuss, we address them. They always seem negative, as if someone always has something to complain about. No, in reality it wants to be a somewhat constructive message, that is, things can be done. And in that sense, I feel that we have, here in western Sicily, in four ports, we have, we are the practical demonstration of an increase in GDP that is extraordinary in recent years. We quadrupled compared to 2014 to 2019 the volumes we did in roll-on/roll-off, volumes we have achieved and consolidated this year in cruises. So evidently we have a consolidated growth, we could do much more. The theme of reshoring is a real theme, but perhaps it should be addressed in a slightly more, let's say, looking at all the links of the logistics chain, not just one. I think that truly a lot can be done, but we must have a spirit of wanting to change things, of putting our face on it, and of doing things simply, because otherwise I think that in a few years we will find ourselves again talking about the same things, the same problems. Because Rampelli, the point is that in reality they tell us that also are...
