Logistics and transport: let’s make a fresh start

March 05 2013 -  “Liberalization, being more competitive, promoting efficiency and productivity: these must all be prime concerns if Italy’s Logistics and Transport industry is to get back on track. Many enterprises possess a significant competitive edge, with organizational and business development margins still to be exploited. But after all is said and done, to really start anew we need a true, sector-specific industrial policy.” Vice-Chairman of Artoni Trasporti of Reggio Emilia in the eightieth year since the family business was established, Anna Maria Artoni looks to the future, to the next eighty years, and asks for urgent measures able to ensure that those who work according to the rules can continue to provide high-level services for the Italian industries.

A country’s competitive advantage is also measured by its modern outlook, its infrastructures and by the quality of its logistic and freight transport system. And from the discussions going on at the present time, i.e. during the Confindustria-Confetra conference and at the Transpotec-Logitec Exhibition in Verona’s Trade Fair Centre, it appears evident that Italy is lagging behind.

“We move industrial Italy every day,” explains Anna Maria Artoni, “but despite all the appeals, the latest being the one from Confindustria, which has included proposals, some of crucial importance, concerning the organization of infrastructures and transport and logistics services for moving goods in the Project for Italy, no solutions to the problems are yet apparent. Solutions based on an approach able to combine the need for investments with the need to regulate the relative services markets. Failure to develop infrastructures and networks certainly weighs heavy on the future of the logistics sector, but respect for the law, safety and security are even more pressing. The first problem to solve is liberalization of the sector which, as it stands today, does not depend on the industrial organization of the country and the disequilibrium between the North and South. It’s a system that does not foster the efficiency, productivity or competitive advantage of transport services. Lastly, regulations that are contrary to the most elementary competition logic have been introduced, and are set out in the principles of the Constitution and Treaties of the EU.”

Inefficient logistics prevents a country from being competitive, as testified by the data provided by the Anfia and Aci analysts. Italy, whose wealth depends on the strength of its manufacturing system, runs the risk of paying this additional price. And if we add this to all the red tape, the cost of energy and the many, never-resolved issues that paralyse our economic system, we can well understand how our economy finds the situation even more difficult than our European and international competitors.

“”Whether the system is efficient or not mainly depends on the interconnections between the different modes of transport,” explains Anna Maria Artoni “and Italy stopped thinking big decades ago.”

Confetra and Confindustria launched an SOS on the subject of “lawfulness and security for Italian road haulage” during a meeting that must herald a new phase of discussion in the endeavour to pinpoint concrete solutions enabling the many enterprises that form the Italian transport and logistics-providing sector to continue to function, thereby safeguarding jobs, quality, security and respect for the environment: “It’s an important issue and should be treated as such,” concludes Anna Maria Artoni, who adds ”in my opinion, the proposal to turn the Register of Road Hauliers into an efficient means for transparency and control is interesting and worth exploring. What is certain is that it must take on a different form from the one it has today.”