Now I introduce another important moment of this day because Monica Giandotti, who should be connected with us, will interview the CEO of Webuild, the company that is building, intends to build the Bridge over the Strait. Monica, are you there? Here she is.
Hello director, here we are. Good afternoon everyone.
Good morning. Please, go ahead, Monica.
So, greetings already done. I am very happy to be with you in these two important days for our country. I am very happy to interview Pietro Salini of Webuild, because Webuild is a leading company in the development of Southern Italy. We heard Salini and the mayor of Naples Manfredi talk about how infrastructure investments represent a fundamental lever for the economic development of the country and the South. So, I want to start with a systemic question and I'll make it very easy for you. What do you look at? What does an entrepreneur, an important entrepreneur like you, see today? Are Italy and Southern Italy attractive from now on for investing still?
But they are for everyone, because we live here, so it's a country where we would like to invest, we would like to do things. We would like our children to have a view of the future like we had. The thing I always reflect on is that the message my father, my grandfather gave us is to say 'Well, our world, your world will be better than what we lived through.' And I would very much like my son to have the same view, so to say his world will be more beautiful than what I lived. And instead there are doubts about this. I have doubts today that this generation, mine, the men of my age, have left the young people of today. Why? Because the first point is to ask ourselves why we are a beautiful country, full of resources, our South is wonderful and we all want to do. It's not true at all this story that in the South people don't want to work. We had an experience with a center, a school we opened in Catanzaro. The first day we expected 50 people, almost 1000 arrived. So people, when given opportunities, want to do. That's the first thing. So this is a country of people who want to do. So, what needs to be done to compete in the world? We as a company are in 52 countries, I have a fairly privileged horizon and view, so I see how other countries work, from Australia to the United States, the Middle East, and I look especially at one thing: how young people live, with what ambition, what desire to do, what they would like to do, how they can try to realize it. So, why is it difficult for us? Because essentially we have a continuous conflict. I recently did this exhibition 'Evoluzio' here in Rome, now we are taking it to the South, we brought it to Palermo, now we are taking it to Reggio Calabria and to Milan, which shows the transformation of a country, how our country was 120 years ago, how it lived and how it lives today. We all take for granted today that you press a button, the light turns on, you go to the bathroom, turn the tap, water comes out, and everything we use today is taken for granted, but who made it? It's not that it's obvious. Instead, all this is the result of enormous work by our parents, our grandparents who created this country as we know it today. That is, today we can all do this, but it was done by people who built, invested, created electricity, built factories, invested in projects, built the high-speed network, built the railways, roads, that is, we don't remember, but we were in a very different country. In 1957, to go from Bari to Naples, I don't know how long it could take, but 2 days. Today with high-speed maybe it takes 2 hours if we manage to finish it. So these are very important issues. When we talk about welfare in this country, that is, pensions, free school, free university, we must think that at the beginning of the century, the idea that a worker's son could go to university was absolutely unthinkable, that is, social mobility did not exist. No one who lived in a social class could think of changing it, of going elsewhere, not even their descendants. Today instead this is largely possible. We have made giant leaps in terms of income distribution, wealth distribution, and we give everyone this possibility, we want to give it to everyone, but this possibility is not free, it is not based on the fact that a comet passed that allowed us to be privileged, it is made by work. So, if you look on television how much space is given by social networks, television, media to work, you will find that it is a very small issue. We talk about it very little because work is uglier than fun. We talk more often about how to have fun, how to go on vacation, how to eat, what type of restaurant, but we never talk about work. When we talk, for example, about the training centers we created, we did it because vocational schools were gradually abandoned, there is no longer the desire to attend them, the desire to do internships or learn. So, this is a fact that greatly conditions a country that not only wants to maintain what it has today as wealth, but would like to make it grow. So, investing first in training is the key to facing an increasingly complicated future.
But, Dr. Salini, can I make an objection on this? Because this is an extraordinary perspective, we have said it to each other many times, not only you and I, but I have had the opportunity to hear it repeated many times. However, for example, on the South, earlier you mentioned, director, the Svimez data, and on the South there is this shadow on growth that nevertheless characterizes this part of Italy. And the South grows, says Svimez, more than the national average, certainly thanks to the PNRR. There are utilities more than infrastructures that are playing a more important role, but young people are leaving.
The young people are leaving. So how do we convince them to stay here? But it's clear that if you have to go to get treatment in a northern region or in another country, this not only takes the patient with it, but also takes the desire to be in another country or another place. So to create the conditions to keep the young people there, the first thing to do is give them an opportunity. I will always remember, inaugurating the stretch of the launch of the work of Bico Cocca Catenanuova there in the Plain of Catania, and waiting for the official visit of the minister, I was there chatting with the prefect, the other people, etc., and I asked this question: 'But what do the young people do here?' And the prefect looked at me, now I don't want to say something that might embarrass the prefect of the time, I won't say which era it was, in short, he looked at me and said as if I were crazy, 'What do they do? Nothing.' That is unacceptable. This is what we cannot accept, that young people do not have this idea of the future that we had. This is unacceptable. So, I say schools, and I started from here because schools are essential to work on people and give them a sense of the future. Then clearly we need to make tools available. So, first, if we want the South to collaborate and be connected to Europe, we must invest in transport networks, which the country is doing. We are building, for example, the Reggio Calabria, Bari-Naples, the high-capacity and high-speed lines in Sicily, but we must connect this world and ensure that the citizen of the South has the same right as the citizen of Milan to have assured mobility, which is the first point, that is, citizens of the South are not second-class citizens, they are equal citizens like others, so they must have the same right to mobility. When we talk about the Bridge of Messina, I do not want to enter a divisive argument because the Bridge of Messina in this country, like all major projects, serves as a cathartic element where people argue about something that hasn't been done for decades, waiting for it not to be done. This is a bit of the desire to discuss authoritatively about nothing, I call it. Instead, I would very much like us to talk in more pragmatic terms about what a bridge across the Strait is. It is the creation of a city, a megalopolis of over 1 million inhabitants, which is one of the few examples in Italy of a city of this size that could finally attract large investments because at that point the size itself would mean that this large city could have an airport worthy of this large city, universities worthy of this large city, schools worthy of this large city, giving opportunities to the young people of a large city. So, clearly, it could be an attractive element of novelty in a world that is instead somehow increasingly stagnant from this point of view, except for these very important interventions that the government is making. So already this, without talking about 3330 meters, the piles are 400 meters high, all things that attract a lot of attention, but we forget what is the social and real element of benefit for the people of a structure. So, I was telling you earlier, right? If you look at the bridge element that costs about 4.5 billion, the bridge structure on an investment that the country has made in the high-speed network of 140 billion in total, we are talking about nothing. It's as if I told you that the steak you have at home is 2% bigger or smaller, if you put 2% less or more sugar in your coffee cup, nothing. That is, it is a non-existent fact, but it changes the logic of a country, unites 5.5 million inhabitants to the railway network, transports and justifies a railway network that arrives in Reggio Calabria, which otherwise would make little sense, because it makes little sense to arrive quickly in Reggio Calabria for all those who have to go to Sicily, they have to get off the freight train and citizens to board a ferry and go to the other side and take a network that takes them quickly after losing 5 hours. It doesn't make much sense. So it is evident that the issue is not how high the piles are, who lives under a pile, maybe there will be a gentleman who lives under the pile, yes, but in a highly urbanized country, infrastructure can also annoy some people because naturally we give rights to that. But if we were to stop for every person who is in some way annoyed, nothing would be done. Imagine building a subway in the city. We have built many subways, in short, someone gets annoyed, but in the end everyone takes the subway.
Exactly, I agree. Dr. Salini, clearly it is difficult to separate the technical discussion from the political discussion, as Manfredi explained earlier. Moreover, Mayor Manfredi said something that, in short, might have seemed newsworthy, that is, it is an opportunity, a structure that connects Calabria with Sicily. The point is, without entering into political issues, but someone says from Messina, right? Because you rightly emphasize how an infrastructure project of such importance is a socio-economic opportunity in the territory where it will be located. Someone says, however, that Webuild is the company executing the project and then maybe it is a large company, so able to bring with it all the professional and technical resources, and who says that it will involve us, the people of Messina? I'll make it easy for you.
Yes. Well, this is easier to answer than one might think because actually there are various reasons why it is easier to involve the citizens of Calabria, those of Messina, those of Sicily in general, and those of the South. We are doing this through schools that we have created precisely to build the skills needed to work on the bridge. We started a few weeks ago, a couple of weeks ago, the recruitment of people. The responses were enormous because we had more than 10,000 contacts of requests in two days. Now I don't know what the counter of job requests for the bridge is, but we are at several tens of thousands. So what I want to say is this: in the South we are making a great investment as a country. We are realizing a large part of it. We have 18 projects in Southern Italy, there are over 9,000 people working with us, a very important supply chain of many companies. This year, with our schools, we trained 1,700 people, all of whom were hired, so it's not just training, as we often talk about, with young people having training certificates at home, no, with us they are at work, they have a job and they keep it and grow because they can then grow in a company that can send them currently to 52 countries in the world to do 170 projects we are building at this moment, from the bridges we have built, because in the end you also have to tell that. If you go to Istanbul, two of those bridges, out of the three you see on the Bosphorus, are ours. If you go to Braila, one of those bridges crossing the Danube is ours, with the same type of things. We have built them for 1040 km. If you think, a bridge of 1040 km gives you an idea of what Webuild is on bridges, so we are ready to discuss the technical detail, but let's say, without being presumptuous, we know how to do this little job, we have been doing it for many generations, we have been doing it for 150 years, we know how to do this job. So if we set out to build the Bridge of Messina, the Bridge of Messina not only have we designed it with the best designers in the world, with the best universities in the world, with everyone, but the bridge is doable. So, it's not a technical issue. Leave the technical issue to the engineers, the technicians who solve problems every day. We are talking about a problem of life of a country.
This country wants to grow, wants a better future for itself and its children, wants to continue having the welfare that all of us have had, wants to have pensions even when it is very old, must be able to compete with others.
