Angelica Krystle Donati, President of ANCE Giovani, spoke to CGTN Europe about the investments being made in Milan and Cortina for the 2026 Winter Games, which are expected to generate positive externalities of over 5 billion euros across the construction and tourism sectors. She estimates a direct economic impact from the Games, driving long-term growth and infrastructure development in northeastern Italy.
00:01Angelica Donati is the president of Italy's Property Developers Association, ANS. Giovanni, earlier I asked her how much Italy's construction sector has been boosted ahead of these games.
00:14Well, there's been a significant amount of investment into these games. It's a 3.5 billion investment overall between Milan and Cortina.
00:23And of course, we can't just think about the investment, but also the long term, let's say, positive externalities, which are estimated to being over 5 billion.
00:31Of course, not just in construction, but in tourism as well, which is going to be a very important factor over the next few years in the area.
00:38How much could this help the economy as a whole? I'm thinking of during and after the games across multiple sectors.
00:45Right. 5.3 billion euros of direct effects during and after the games, which I think can probably be amplified in the long term.
00:52I mean, look, we have other cases of success stories of these big events which have caused long term growth and change.
00:58Just think about Milan post the 2015 Expo. It was kind of the turning point for the city and it drove the investment boom that is still going on.
01:06So I think Italy needs to make the most of these big events when we have them, because, for example, the Milan-Crotina games have been a wonderful opportunity to boost infrastructure development in an area of Italy in the Northeast,
01:19which was historically very poorly connected. And of course, this better connectivity isn't just functional for the games, but it will be very useful to drive tourism over the next years and decades as well.
01:30We know that Italy's economy is battling a little bit and the 2026 EU forecast is not as great as one would like.
01:41So if you think of things like the COVID recovery fund that Italy has had at its access, it's not used all of that. What's going wrong there?
01:49So first of all, absolutely. And there's been recent estimates by Confine Doucet, which show that had we not have the PNRR, the recovery fund, our growth would have been stagnant.
01:58Whereas even though it's low, it's been positive and it's forecasted to be positive in 2026 as well.
02:04Not all the funds have been spent. Not all of them will be spent. I can say with a bit of pride that the highest level of spend has happened in the construction space.
02:16As you know, half of the around 200 billion euros that we're receiving from the EU, whether it's a loan or a grant, are going through construction and construction spending is the most advanced.
02:26Our estimates are that at least 60% of projects will be finished on track and so will be fully, let's say, fully paid off.
02:35The problem we've had in Italy and probably the biggest positive inheritance from the PNRR is our change in policy.
02:43So one of the biggest changes we've had to make to implement PNRR is improve our bureaucracy, simplify some processes.
02:49Now, I think this will pay off more in the long term because obviously in the space of four years, revolutionary change is hard.
02:55But we've put in place new positive practices which can be used to then funnel and channel future investments in a much better way.
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