Urso: 'Sicily the scientific, technological and productive hub of Europe'

Sicily is destined to be a European scientific, technological, and productive hub. This is the picture presented by the Minister for Enterprise and Made in Italy, Adolfo Urso, who inaugurated the island`s second House of Made in Italy in Palermo: "It will be a crucial reference point: on the one hand, it will serve as an antenna for the institutions to collect the territory`s requests, and consequently coordinate interventions, and on the other hand, it will provide assistance to the local production system, especially with SMEs, on all the measures to support businesses. The objective is to create an effective and continuous meeting so that we can be more aware of what needs to be done to improve the legislative environment in our country'. Inauguration that the President of the Sicilian Region Renato Schifani defines as 'an important step for that industrial world we look at with interest. We do this with bonuses for incentives and support for small and medium-sized enterprises. This gives the sense of a liberal policy that looks to growth and more jobs'.

An island, Sicily, which is meeting the two great modernisation challenges of Europe in terms of production. One is the digital side, for example in Palermo where fibre optic cables are arriving, the other is that of microelectronics in Etna Valley, 'which is becoming the largest production hub in the Mediterranean, with a 5 billion euro investment, the most significant on micro electronics authorised by the European commission, in recent months,' says the minister. "So Sicily," Urso continues, "will become a scientific and technological production and communication hub in the digital sector and, at the same time, in my opinion, it can and will become a production hub for green technology as well, because, at the industrial hub of Catania, with 3Sun, we are developing what will become, in the coming months, the largest photovoltaic panel production plant in Europe. It will have repercussions on the supply chains of the entire territory. In the current Transition 5.0 plan, EUR 13 billion has been allocated to digital innovation, and 6.3 billion to green innovation and energy efficiency in our companies. I hope that Sicilian companies, too, will go through the process of acquiring technological machinery and training their workers in digital and green technologies.

A design to which corresponds a precise idea on Sicily's production poles: 'Our idea is that Sicily can develop around three large industrial production poles: Termini Imerese, Catania and the biorefineries in Priolo, Augusta and the industrial area of Gela,' Urso says. 'In the next few days I will convene two meetings in Rome, both regarding the Priolo pole and the complex crisis in Gela, where despite the efforts and extensions, the local production reality has not produced enough projects. It is our intention to intensify them'. On the Syracuse front, and Priolo in particular, we need to understand what direction the companies intend to take: 'The first act of my government, urged by the then newly elected president of the region, was to safeguard Priolo, a refining pole without which the entire Italian chemical industry would have been blown up. It seemed impossible, but I safeguarded the plant,' the minister said. 'With the new owners we are working to ensure that they carry out the investments that have been planned and provided for in the authorisation we granted, through the exercise of golden power.

Another point concerns Termini Imerese. And in this case the minister explains: 'There is absolute collaboration with the Sicilian region. There are several dossiers in which we have been involved, one example is Termini Imerese, where, after 13 years of lay-offs, we have finally started the procedures to reopen the industrial site. We are already at work and in the coming weeks we will announce investments in what will become a large industrial park and a real development pole for the whole of Sicily'.