A Look at Italy on it's
Republic Day Anniverary -60 Years
The ANNOTICO Report
The
The following is
contributed by the Italian Embassy in
It is always difficult to find a slogan or a
single sentence that can fully describe the character of a given country. This
is all the more true for
A foreigner who travels through Italy will experience different landscapes and changing climates: from the amazing white slopes and valleys of the Alps and the central "Appennini" range, through the enchanting beaches and blue sea of the Mediterranean South.
The traveler will be surrounded _ at the same
time and in the same city _ by contemporary and ancient buildings, such as the
new avant-garde Show-House for the imperial Roman Ara
Pacis recently built in the center of
The traveler will enjoy the beauties of
large, dynamic cities such as
Every spot he or she will look,
will reveal insights of a colorful and powerful reality that never stops
living, working and changing.
But the truth of this country is that it has
always strived to explore new fields of activity and bring them to their best
performance. Let's take the example of a famous city, like
In the same city, though, old and new
traditions live together. Nobel Prize graduates, like Rubbia
in Physics, used to teach at
This is the very same city where four centuries ago Galileo started his experiments that paved the way for modern science and that is surrounded by high-tech industrial clusters in the mechanical and motorcycle sector.
As you may see, thus, it is difficult to
synthesize and present in a few words a country like
Balanced Economy
Its economy is well balanced between the manufacturing sector (almost 28 percent of GDP) and services (70 percent). The Italian economic landscape is characterized by thousands of dynamic small- and medium-sized enterprises but also by large firms well ahead in some key technological sectors.
This is the case of the Finmeccanica Group in the fields of aviation, aerospace, weapons, transport; Ferrari, Maserati, Alfa Romeo and Piaggio in the automotive sector; Techint and Danieli in the field of equipment and technologies for the steel industry; Eni and Enel in energy and petrochemicals; and ST Microelectronics in the chip industry, just to name a few.
The share of the services sector in the GDP is increasing as in all major and most advanced economies in the world. Italy has one of the largest and most developed telecommunication markets in Europe (the per capita ratio of mobile phones is one of the highest, thus permitting the Italian firm TIM to be one of the biggest in this sector in the EU) and is investing heavily (seven billion euros) in transport infrastructures, especially in port and railway facilities devised to connect the peninsula with Europe's and the Mediterranean's major hubs.
Needless to say, how well developed are the tourism, leisure, entertainment and gastronomy industries.
Italian Reforms
In the last few years, the Italian government has undertaken reforms to enhance assets and productivity that needed stimulation. Since the 1990s the banking sector went through a process of concentration and increase in the average dimension of credit companies.
The intervention of the public sector in the economy has been widely reduced through a long series of privatizations and liberalizations that have enhanced competition and further opened many key markets.
Fiscal reforms have been designed to help firms and consumers increase investments and consumption and have led to a lowering of both the corporate and the direct tax.
Furthermore,
Since 2004, a new corporate law, which dramatically improved rules for company start-ups, organization and administration, is in force. This reform has brought Italian corporate law in line with that of most other advanced countries, introducing simplification and greater flexibility for companies' decision-making and investments.
In the last few years,
To achieve this end, more options in the labor market have been introduced such as "lease" job contracts, greater room for part-time and job-sharing among workers, freelance collaborations with companies for specific projects, and so on.
Thanks to these reforms and the investments made in education and the acquisition of professional skills, the unemployment rate has diminished significantly. The government, furthermore, and in compliance with EU rules, has streamlined a wide-range of incentives and support schemes in order to help business start-ups and investments, especially in the southern regions.
Turning now to non-economic issues, it is worth mentioning some reforms that have recently modernized both the school and the university education systems.
These reforms have been conceived to give better education and professional qualifications to the young, to improve the performance of S&T research and stimulate cooperation among universities and firms.
Finally, the interaction between citizens and the public administration is being made smoother and quicker; major innovations are gradually being introduced to develop a full e-government system and to make it more "user-friendly" for everybody.
The Italian economy has begun reaping the effects of these reforms: Manufacturing output in the first months of 2006 has experienced a sharp increase and the prospects for economic growth are bright.
Scientific, Technological Researches
A full and complete picture of contemporary
This development allowed _ through continuous efforts _ achievement of worldwide, well-recognized contributions of scientists like Natta in chemistry, Marconi, Fermi and Rubbia in physics, Levi Montalcini in medicine, all among others, Nobel prize graduates.
Creativity and a well-established network of universities and research centres is the key of Italian success in the field of science and technology.
Science, at the highest level, requires not only well equipped laboratories, but also a large ability to overcome the barriers of common knowledge with new and revolutionary interpretations of results and observations.
It is typical of the nature of Italians to
put in the basket of scientific knowledge both intelligence and fantasy. At
present,
We can be reminded of some of them: fundamental science (physics, chemistry, materials), health and vaccines, aerospace, mechanics (both in the field of car design and in the field of industrial machinery devoted to almost any kind of advanced production process), renewable and new energies (mainly solar thermodynamics and hydrogen, as energy vector and related technologies) and so on.
The reader will now have a brief outline of
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