Webuild Ceo Pietro Salini at Lombardia 2030 convention: bureaucracy must be streamlined to deliver Pnrr and relaunch industry with infrastructure

MILAN, November 28, 2022 - "We have an obligation to deliver the PNRR (National Plan of Recovery and Resilience), but the number of bureaucratic steps that must be taken to do public works in Italy has no equal anywhere in the world. If we were to take away all the unnecessary things from the rules and regulations, we would perform a great service for our country and our ability to build infrastructure," said Webuild Chief Executive Pietro Salini at Lombardia 2030, a convention that brought together public institutions and representatives of the social, economic and industrial sectors of the Lombardy to discuss the challenges and opportunities to develop the northern Italian region. Held today at the Pirelli Hangar Bicocca in northern Milan, the convention had among its participants the Italian Minister of Infrastructure and Transport Matteo Salvini.

Speaking on a panel with Luigi Ferraris, Chief Executive of Ferrovie dello Stato, and Luigi Roth, President of Autostrada Pedemontana Lombarda, Salini said the country had an enormous productive capacity. "All you need to do is think of the World Cup in Qatar, where Webuild built the Al Bayt stadium that hosted the opening ceremony. Also in Qatar, the Group built the Doha metro," he said. But this great Italian expertise needs to find fertile ground if it is to continue to be competitive abroad and make the country stronger. "Public works must have an economic and financial frame of reference if they are to be built correctly. This country has brought a good part of its production capacity to bankruptcy because it has not been able to plan public works at their true cost. What we need to do is build infrastructure not for 2030 but for 2050 because the big projects of this country need to be done for the long term, just as it is done in other developed countries. We have to anticipate the commercial traffic flows because the real challenge will be to forecast changes like that one. That's why today's construction sites are not only for the infrastructure of tomorrow but for the Italy of the future," he said.