Uilca alarm: 'Unmanned territories risk illicit forms of credit'
For the union, we need to go beyond banking and build a system that can withstand social and economic imbalances
3' min read
3' min read
CGIL and UIL are aligned in denouncing the risks of banking desertification. If the former, through Fisac, emphasises that the phenomenon 'reduces the possibility for families and businesses to encounter a branch, particularly in the most inland areas' and 'leaves room for illegal financing channels, Uilca emphasises that 'with its campaign against branch closures, launched throughout the country, the social role of banks has been highlighted, regarding the risk that a territory unattended by regulated interlocutors runs. Unlawful forms of lending are always just around the corner'.
The banking system, says Fulvio Furlan, secretary general of Uilca, speaking of the role of credit in Liguria, in the fight against new poverty, 'is central to the life of the country, to the development of the territories, and to the support of families and businesses. Banks must recover their social role of serving communities, the territory, and people. Branches constitute a garrison of legality, in the absence of which entire areas risk being abandoned, leaving space for unregulated entities to provide credit'.
Supporting this argument are data compiled by Roberto Telatin, of the Orietta Guerra Study Centre, which illustrate how the average age of people in Italy has risen from 43.8 years to 46.2 years over the last twenty years, while in Liguria it has risen from 47.9 years to 49.4 years, making the region the oldest in the country, with 270.8 over-65s for every 100 young people under 14, a figure much higher than the national figure of 193.11 elderly people for every 100 young people.
'In this scenario,' is Telatin's reflection, 'given the longevity of the Ligurian population, the new poverty also stems from getting into debt in order to care for oneself, a new frontier for those who for decades believed that the welfare state was a definitive conquest'.
Today Liguria, reads the Uilca report, has 30.76 pensioners per 100 inhabitants, the highest percentage in the country. The national average is 26.71 per 100 inhabitants. In Liguria, 6.52 per cent of male pensioners have an income of less than EUR 500 per month, while the number of women with a pension below that level is 8.87 per cent. Currently, in Liguria, the document continues, the poverty line for a family of three members, one of whom is between zero and three years old and two between 30 and 59 years old, is in a range between 1,339 and 1,407 euros, while in Italy, the same type of family has a poverty line between 1,308 and 1,462 euros.
