(ANSA) - ROME, DEC 10 - Deputy Premier and Foreign Minister
Antonio Tajani said Tuesday he thought the government would be
able to find in the 2025 budget some one billion euros for
Italy's struggling car sector amid slumping Stellantis sales and
fears of further job cuts.
Trade unions have said another 12,000 jobs are at risk while
Stellantis has said it needs money to be able to guarantee
Italian plants amid rumours of more offshoring of production.
Stellantis contractor Trasnova last week announced almost 100
redundancies.
"I think we will find about 1 billion to support the car
industry", said Tajani to Rai state broadcaster when interviewed
on Monday night's government summit on the budget.
"Yesterday we decided on a series of initiatives to support the
industry, both the reduction of the (business tax) IRES, we gave
a signal with the tax wedge, and we cut the web tax for small
businesses", he added.
The Italian-French-American carmaker is embarking on a new
chapter after Carlos Tavares resigned as CEO at the start of the
month.
The Portuguese manager, one of the architects of the 2020 merger
between Fiat-Chrysler with Peugeot, is a controversial figure in
Italy after a series of run-ins with the political world.
He made waves at a parliamentary hearing in October when he said
car production in Italy was too expensive unless the government
delivered fresh incentives for the sector.
He subsequently failed to rule out redundancies at Stellantis's
Italian plants.
Former industry minister and centrist Azione (Action) party
leader Carlo Calenda recently replied to Tavares saying: "the
dramatic situation of Stellantis is clear in the numbers;
employees have decreased by 11,500 units, another 3,800 will
leave this year, the gigafactory of Termoli will not be built,
the production of commercial vehicles at an all-time low (-31%),
Italian models, from the 500 to the Topolino to the Panda to the
Alfa Romeo junior produced in Algeria, Serbia, Morocco, Poland,
while Mirafiori had a drop of 83% in 2024".
The depth of the crisis of the Italian auto sector was shown by
Istat data released on Tuesday that said car production fell
40.4% year-on-year in September.
The drop in the first nine months of 2024 was 27.9%, the
national statistics agency said.
It also said that Italy had the highest number of cars per
capita in the EU in 2023, with 694 passenger vehicles for every
1,000 inhabitants.
That compares to an EU average of 571 cars for every 1,000
residents.
The national statistics agency that the transition towards
less-polluting cars is going slowly. It said hybrid vehicles
accounted for 6.9% of the cars in regional capitals and only
0.6% were electric.
Istat said 47.4% of cars in Italy were run on petrol, down 0.8
of a percentage point a year since 2015, while 35.2% were
powered by diesel, down 0.3 of a point a year since 2015.
(ANSA).