Italy is facing a difficult winter. How drastic the increases in electricity and gas are is evidenced by the huge bills faced by citizens as well as catering establishments and all other commercial activities. Bills in shop windows
“Accounts for this year in the commercial sector amount to 33 billion euros, while last year they were 11 billion. This affects service industries that have already suffered in the year of the pandemic that nullified earnings and employment levels. Many have closed, or taken on even more debt. We are asking for government intervention when it comes to the public contribution, which is now 15 percent – if the increase in energy costs exceeds 30 percent,” said the president of the Confederation of Companies and Catering for Lombardy, Lino Stopani.
According to him, the price must increase because otherwise it is not possible to continue like this, all commercial activities will go into the red.
“At the same time, we don’t have a culture of saving energy, which we waste: lights on when shops are closed, doors open while the inside is heated or the air conditioner is working, very high temperatures in the houses, all of these are luxuries that we can no longer afford,” he pointed out. Feet.
These days, the initiative of displaying electricity bills in shop windows has started in Italy, and in this way retailers and restaurateurs want to achieve several goals.
“We put electricity bills in the window to explain to clients that we are forced to raise prices. It is force majeure and we are very upset about it, but we have no other choice because due to abnormally high bills we will either close down or increase our prices. We are asking the government to help us in a concrete way because the increase occurred before the war in Ukraine. I don’t think Europe understood that a country like Italy cannot survive this. This is scandalous! What if we all stopped paying because we can’t afford it? What should we do, let’s set the price of a pizza at 30 euros,” noted the restaurateur.
Many restaurateurs put signs like this in their windows: When costs become unsustainable if I increase the price of a pizza to 10 euros – will I be a thief or will I close?
“With this initiative, we want to send several messages, firstly that we are desperate because what is happening is terrible, secondly we want to be transparent to clients because they can see how much we paid last year and how much now and that if we increase the prices of services it is because because we have huge expenses. There is also a message to politics: If we stop working, the economy will shut down,” Stopani said.
He added that this is a decisive moment for the country and whoever wins the elections will have a really difficult task.
“The war in Ukraine only worsened the already existing problems, Italy has a terrible public debt of 2,700 billion euros and there is a lot of speculation and instrumentalization. 120,000 companies risk closing and 30,000 catering facilities out of a total of 300,000 may be closed in the coming period,” Stopani said.
Daniela Renisi Federalbergi from the Association of Hoteliers says that the Government must set a maximum energy price like Spain and Portugal. “I don’t know what we are waiting for, because announcements are already coming from several hotels that they will close in October because they cannot sustain the costs,” she stressed.
In addition to raw materials and foodstuffs, which have risen in price several times, there are also huge electricity and gas prices, and it will be almost impossible for catering establishments to continue their work without raising prices. Lino Stopani also says that Italy is not used to waivers because the time of prosperity lasted a long time and it is necessary to see if the country has the capacity to endure.
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