italian tourism
YOU would not know it from the English-language signs promising to serve passengers ``quckly'', but Naples' Capodichinoairport is British-owned. In August, 70% of it was bought by BAA, a company that also runs, among other things, London'smain airport, Heathrow. For the Italian south this is a symbol of hope. Finding an international firm of this calibre willing toinvest there has greatly boosted its confidence. BAA, for its part, was attracted by the south's tourist potential, but spent three years thinking hard about the $44m deal. Whatclinched it in the end was the enthusiasm of Antonio Bassolino, the mayor of Naples since 1993. He won round BAA bosseswith his clear commitment to privatisation, and fought off opposition at home to foreign ownership, branded as ``colonisation byA former communist fundamentalist, Mr Bassolino is an unlikely champion of privatisation. But the BAA deal is no one-off. MrBassolino boasts about selling the municipal dairy-``What was a city council doing selling milk?''-and about pioneering, withMerrill Lynch, Italy's first international municipal bond issue, which sold well in America. The cash was used to renovate thecity's public transport system. He is pro
According to Giorgio Napolitano, the minister of the interior, far more progress against organised crime has been made on thepolitical front-by breaking the links between crime, government and the judiciary-than on the economic side, where the potentialfor drug-dealing and racketeering remains significant. moting public-private partnerships; and he has just persuaded the Chinese commercialfleet to use Naples as its main container port for serving Europe. If the authorities can show they are able to protect investors, many more international companies may follow in thefootsteps of BAA. Much of the corruption revealed in the tangentopoli scandal wasconcentrated in the south, where many public-works programmes became purely a means of distributing public money. Lousy infrastructure is a bigger problem for mycompany than the Camorra. Mr Bassolino talks withpassion of re-born civic pride, of the need for Naples to solve its own problems. '' Local experts on the Mafia say he may be exaggerating, but not much. It may be hard to believe, but the tourist industry in Italy, and especially the south, is seriouslyunderdeveloped. Thecountry's local and regional governments, it seems, are not even up to collecting hand-outs. Naples, too, is more in control of its Camorra now. Tourists in the city centre are probably as safe at 3am as they would be atnoon in midtown Manhattan. Who is the boss now? The Mafia (along with similar criminal organisations, such as the Camorra in Naples) remains a huge problem for the south. Their first testwill come later this month, when some of them are up for re-election. But there is still plenty of inefficient southern bureaucracy left. (Encouragingly, the Sicilian grower who complained about this was on his way to Kuwait to try to sell his crop there.
Common topics in this essay:
German'' Using,
Giorgio Napolitano,
Encouragingly Sicilian,
Camorra Tourists,
Enzo Bianco,
Antonio Bassolino,
Lynch Italy's,
Leoluca Orlando,
Sicilian Mafia,
Heathrow Italian,
organised crime,
cultural tourism,
organisations camorra,
inefficient bureaucracy,
sicilian mafia,
tourist attractions,
direct election,
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Acceptance Essays
