Italy is ready to take on major new building projects including a bridge linking Sicily to the mainland which could create 100,000 jobs in the region, premier Matteo Renzi said Tuesday
"It could create jobs - 100,000 jobs...take Calabria out of isolation and bring Sicily nearer...it's a positive challenge," Renzi said at a ceremony marking 110 years of the Italian industrial group Salini Impregilo.
"If your paperwork is order and you are ready to re-start something that has been at a standstill for ten years, we're ready to go," Renzi said.
Salini Impregilo heads a consortium intended to build the controversial bridge across the Straits of Messina which was first proposed more than two decades ago by former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.
Should the bridge be built it would be the world's largest suspension bridge.
Detailed plans for the nine billion euro bridge have existed since the early 1990s but have been abandoned by successive governments.
Supporters say the bridge would boost to Italy's economically underdeveloped south, which suffers from higher-than-average unemployment.
Opponents of the project highlight the dangers of corruption, mafia infiltration of building tenders, Italy's poor record in completing large-scale building projects and the high risk of earthquakes in the region.
Italy's former infrastructure minister Maurizio Lupi said on Tuesday he would ask party whips in the parliament to table a debate "within the next three months" on a bill on the Messina Bridge project.
Lupi's centre-right Area Popolare party is a junior partner in Renzi's centre-left-centre-right government.
