The Italian Ministry of Economic Development has been involved and it is promoting a supporting program for all the companies showing an economic interest in starting business activities, in the extractive industry, abroad, in order to satisfy the supply of raw materials for internal national purpose.

With this purpose, the first milestone has been the signing of an industrial memorandum of understanding to establish some general guidelines regarding the extractive industry, during the international governmental mission in Afghanistan, last May 2011.

The conference, promoted and managed by the Italian Ministry of Economic Development-General Directorate for Mineral Resources and Energy, CRIET-University Research Center for Economic Development, Éupolis Lombardia, has the aim to screen the current needs of the Italian companies with the purpose to underline the main important actions that could strongly push forward the internationalization process, starting from the international agreement, signed by the Ministry of Economic Development, already in force.

The event presents two different sections:

• during the first part, the Italian institutions such as Ministry ofEconomic development, ENEA and Regione Lombardia will show the new business opportunities related to the internationalization process in the extractive industry;
• the second part will start with the description of significant business experiences on the field, by some of the major industrial operators in the extractive industry, evaluating the needs of the specific business areas.The idea is to share knowledge and experience in order to encourage the extractive industry business and its operators to catch new opportunities of internationalization with a collaborative and supportive worldwide business model.