Italy’s central bank governor has said artificial intelligence could help strengthen the country’s weak labour productivity, urging faster adoption of the technology across firms.
Fabio Panetta made the remarks during the annual assembly of the Bank of Italy, where he outlined the potential economic gains from wider use of AI.
He said that under a slow adoption scenario, AI could lift Italy’s productivity by about 0.2 percentage points annually, while rapid and broad integration could push gains to more than one percentage point each year.
Panetta stressed that Italy would need to reinforce its venture capital and private equity sectors to fully support innovation and scale up AI-driven growth.
He stated that around 30% of Italian companies are already using AI in some form, but only about 5% have adopted it at a deep or intensive level.
According to him, Italy still lags behind international peers in AI uptake, and stronger public policy intervention may be required to accelerate deployment.
The central bank is currently engaging with major global AI developers and has also begun discussions with commercial banks on how best to integrate the technology into financial services and operations.
Goodness Anunobi
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