Francesco Mati, president of the Ornamental Plant Nursery District of Pistoia, launches an appeal to the Italian Government and local administrations: "There is no more time, nurseries have run out of resources and will soon have to lay off employees". In the last 2 months, due to the Coronavirus emergency, the commercial activities of nurserymen have been stalled: they are at 10/20 percent of last year’s turnover. "Bureaucracy and banks are slow in giving financial aid and we are close to having a domino effect in this district, which represents the excellence of Made in Italy.
"Time is up. If there is no rapid financial support intervention, companies will begin to lay off employees and close their doors. And we will be able to say goodbye to one of the top representatives of Tuscan agriculture and of the entire Italian flower and live plants industry".
Launching this cry of alarm and ask for help from national and local institutions is Francesco Mati, president of the Ornamental Plant Nursery District of Pistoia (Distretto rurale vivaistico ornamentale di Pistoia): the main center of live plant producers in Italy. This district, according to provincial data of the Chamber of Commerce in 2019, has 1,450 companies with 6,000 hectares of cultivated areas and around 6,000 employees, and last year was worth 733 million euros in turnover, of which around 500 million was from export. The latter "had been in a positive trend since 2017", underlines Mati, "and last year it had grown in value by more than 7%".
With the tsunami of the Sars-cov-2 epidemic and the consequent state of emergency in Italy and abroad, everything changed. "In the last 2 months", explains Francesco Mati, "the commercial activities of nursery companies have practically stopped: in some cases resulting in only 10% respect to last year, in others 20% or 30%, but some companies went down to zero. This substantial commercial block in the crucial period of the year concerns small, medium and large companies, it is generalized". In addition to the missing income, there is the problem of bureaucracy and the banks that slow down the arrival of financial aid, even those aids that the government has promised would be quick. For these reasons, the nurserymen are in a situation of serious liquidity crisis.
"There really is no more time", concludes the president Mati, "our companies have run out of resources. We urgently need financial help from central and local government levels. Otherwise, a domino effect will be triggered in the district which will lead to the destruction of an important excellence of Tuscan agriculture and of the Made in Italy".
For more information:
Associazione Vivaisti Italiani
www.vivaistiitaliani.it