Italys government hopes to jump-start the economy and create hundreds of thousands of jobs with a massive public works programme and a home improvement spree worth a combined tens of billions of euros.
However, both projects have come under fire from environmentalists and the centre-left opposition, who say they could lead to blighted landscapes and cityscapes, a boom in illegal building and infiltration by organised crime.
On Friday the government approved an infrastructure improvement programme worth some 17 billion euros, about evenly divided between public and private funds.
Its centrepiece is a project to build one of the worlds longest suspension span bridges across the Straits of Messina to link southern mainland Italy with the island of Sicily.
The bridge project, a dream since Italys unification in 1870 and in the planning stages for decades, has been shot down and resurrected by successive governments since World War Two.
Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconis government, however, hopes this time the plan will stick, and some ministers are even hopeful that ground can be broken as early as this year.
Environmentalists oppose the bridge as unsafe and opposition politicians say they fear mafia groups on both sides of the straits - who directly or indirectly control some construction companies - would literally kill for a piece of the action. Most analysts expect Italys economy to shrink by around 3 percent this year, tripling the 1 percent contraction in 2008, which was the steepest fall in gross domestic product since 1975.
Other building plans approved include a project to protect Venice from floods with a massive movable dykes as well as new highway construction, particularly on the southern mainland, to feed traffic smoothly to the bridge.
Public Works Minister Altero Matteoli told Rome daily Il Messaggero the new infrastructure programme could be worth about 0.6 percent of Italys GDP, save some 65,000 jobs that would be otherwise lost due to lack of funds and create 140,000 new jobs.
"The bridge could be finished by 2016," Matteoli told the paper on Sunday, adding that most of the mega-projects could start later this year. Since GDP posted a record 1.8 percent quarterly fall at the end of last year, industrial output has continued to decline and indicators of business confidence, manufacturing and service sector activity all plumbed record lows in February.
Italy has not posted two consecutive years of negative growth since World War Two and Berlusconi has chided many in the media for what he says is excessive doom and gloom.
Berlusconis 10-month-old government is expected next Friday to formalise a related measure to spur the construction industry at the local level.
Comments
Comments are closed.