In the 19th century, Sicily was considered (by northern Italians) nothing more than "a paradise of poor devils." But no more. Since World War II, long-neglected Sicily has suddenly started racing ahead far faster than the rest of Italy — or for that matter almost any other part of Europe.
Last week, in the new Catania industrial zone, a $4,000,000 steel fabricating plant went into operation. Nearby, close to Messina, work started on a $5,000,000 plant to .produce frozen orange juice. At Augusta, a ghost port barely five years ago, a third major project was completed, a multimillion-dollar oil refinery with a capacity of 2,800,000 tons annually and new docks for 45,000-ton oil tankers. At Enna, in Sicily's depressed interior, Milan Edison was putting the finishing touches on a $16 million chemical plant. All told, since 1948 nearly $500 million in new capital has been invested in Sicily. In the process, Sicily's gross income last year soared 20% to $857 million, v. only 8% increase for the rest of Italy.
Taxes & Loans. The credit for Sicily's renaissance goes largely to the island's autonomous regional parliament and to Domenico La Cavera, 41, the slim, dynamic president of Sicily's Confederation of Industry. Says La Cavera: "My heart beats with joy. I am vibrating with enthusiasm." He also vibrates with strong ideas about free enterprise and how to help it along. A peasant's son, La Cavera started out with a small cement plant, expanded it, then set out to see how U.S. industry operated. He returned from the U.S. convinced that Sicily should reject Italy's statist economic policy and instead open the doors to private investment. Says he: "Government has neither the means nor the ability to remake Sicily. But it must act to give private enterprise freedom and encouragement to do the job."
For a starter in 1948, La Cavera helped convince Sicily's parliament to encourage investment with a new law permitting investors legally to avoid paying taxes on dividends by holding stock "in the name of the bearer," i.e., anonymously. To help companies themselves, another law was passed two years later exempting all new industrial enterprises from corporate income taxes (18% and up on mainland Italy) for ten years; all customs duties were abolished on machinery and other goods for new companies. Small business was encouraged by a government finance agency providing loans up to $80,000, big business by another state agency with $32 million capital and total lending authority of $160 million at low 4% (average Italian money rate: 12%) interest terms. The government also set up an apprentice school to turn out 70,000 trained industrial workers annually.