The governor of the Bank of Italy, whose mandate expires in November, outlines the balance sheet for the year and the forthcoming challenges for the country and the institution as well as for the banking sector, as well as a summary of his 12 years at the helm of Bank of Italy. After the last few years which saw a virtual and then a hybrid event limited to a few guests, this year we return to the formula in the complete presence of the guests in the halls of Palazzo Koch, in Via Nazionale
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The governor of the Bank of Italy Ignazio Visco gave his last final considerations this morning. The number one of Bankitalia, whose mandate expires in November, as per tradition, will draw up the balance sheet for the year and the forthcoming challenges for the country and the institution as well as for the banking sector, which is now facing many requests for raise borrowing rates to bring them into line with those applied to loans. After the last few years which saw a virtual and then a hybrid event limited to a few guests, this year we return to the formula in the complete presence of the guests in the halls of Palazzo Koch, in Via Nazionale, in Rome.
Visco’s speech
The considerations will also be the final point of Visco’s twelve-year mandate, in which the institution and Italy have profoundly changed. From the Berlusconi government, from which he was appointed, to today’s Meloni and his majority with whom, after the first uncertainties, there is a substantial commonality on some key issues, first and foremost the rigor on public finances. An independent institution by practice and, since the birth of the ECB of which it belongs, by law, the Bank of Italy has in any case a close relationship with politics and its institutions. Visco in recent years has avoided friction and direct attacks but has not given up on independence and autonomy. But, politics aside, they were ‘intense’ years as he himself recently defined them, also because they were crossed by a long series of crises such as the resolution of the 4 banks, MPS and non-performing and international credits, such as that of the sovereign debt , Covid and most recently the aggression against Ukraine. Crises in which the bank has come under fire several times, accused of having been too or too little strict with the credit institutions.
Who will succeed Visco?
The birth of the single ECB supervision has reshaped its tasks, putting an end to some unwritten practices and traditions. And then there is participation in the decisions of Frankfurt. Visco supported Draghi’s extraordinary policies and with the arrival of inflation he approved the change of pace, however, asking for greater gradualness and also to consider the risks that a sudden correction can cause in a country like ours which is growing but it carries with it a high debt and an economy dependent on the bank credit channel which a tightening can precisely cause damage. For the moment, neither he nor the other Italian member of the board, Fabio Panetta, indicated by many as his successor, has been heard. A hypothesis that is not taken for granted given that the internal solution, with the exception of Draghi’s parenthesis, is the one followed in the Bank. The first word belongs, by law, to the government and the prime minister, but the nomination is then made by the president of the republic, a non-formal step.
Source-tg24.sky.it