SAN_MARINO

San Marino. Tourism, Rf against Pedini Amati: “(Expensive) lights and many shadows”

“Christmas is approaching and promises to be rather lavish, as Secretary Pedini declaimed. Lots of lights, while paradoxically the need to save electricity is preached to the people of San Marino”.

“At the same time – writes the opposition party – they were robust bill hikes announced of electricity to San Marino businesses and families, after weeks of confusion, alarmism, orders and counter-orders, embarrassing conflicts of competence between authorities, political secretaries and the service company. In short, many are tightening their belts while the State spends and spreadsnot only in electricity unfortunately.

Some will say that these are still investments in the tourist season, and therefore it is worth filling the country with lots of lights and other energy-intensive initiatives.

Unfortunately, in the face of these substantial costs for fittings which have alternated throughout the year, with money borrowed and which are therefore destined to leave the pockets of all San Marino citizens, the tourism sector does not seem particularly healthy.

The hotels close. The Secretariat for Tourism spends a lot of money on many events, except to see tourists staying in the surrounding area. There has always been talk of quality tourism, which everyone hopes will become an important component of the flow of visitors to the Republic, but quality restaurants close or after bombastic triumphal announcements of large investments, such as in the case of Ciprianithey don’t even show up. There is no public investment in infrastructure nor collaborations for synergistic initiatives between public and private sectors”.

Rf continues: “We don’t have an overall vision of the sector in the coming years, much less a strategic plan with clear objectives and defined resources. Initiatives are piled up, with very high costs, however confusing the technical functions of organization with the political ones of strategic choices for the present and for the future. Money continues to be donated, which we do not have and which we pay very dearly, for collaborations, ad personam agreements, press offices that it is not clear what they communicate, private initiatives generously subsidized with public funds and perhaps assignments to devise monumental projects completely devoid of lenders and concrete possibilities of realisation.

It seems like a tragic return to the mentality and habits of the notorious nineties, when the best policy was that of clientelism in favor of this and that, without however having the financial resources of the time, punctually crumbling. The advent to the government of the protagonists of revolutionary populism and “de noantri” buzzwords has not counteracted this drift, on the contrary it has produced an even more slovenly version of it.

With a State Budget that travels annually with losses exceeding 75 million euroswith a mountain of debt largely thrown into the cauldron of the banks or in often useless running costs, with public health care increasingly in pieces and the social security system to which only a patch has been tacked on with the latest reformat to save appearances, we can at least enjoy the Christmas lights. Paid in debt” concludes Rf.

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