Enterprises, value of plants in balance sheets back below 2020 levels: new boost in manoeuvre
InfoCamere's analysis of 623,000 companies shows a 1.3 per cent drop in tangible assets in 2024. Growth in profits and equity slows down. 4 billion for depreciation with the Budget Bill
by Dario Aquaro and Cristiano Dell'Oste
The boost to investments by companies - which the manoeuvre will give with increased depreciation - will act on a still resilient entrepreneurial fabric, but with some stretch marks now visible in the accounts. In the financial statements for the year 2024, the average value of the item 'tangible assets' (plant and machinery) continued its swinging trend, with an annual decline of 1.3%, remaining well below 2020 levels.
Looking back and comparing the average amount budgeted in 2019 for this item to 100, we see a jump to 125.6 in 2020: the effect of both the bonuses in force at the time and the chance to freeze depreciation granted that year by the anti-Covid regulations (an accounting choice that may have 'inflated' the numbers). Between 2021 and 2024, we then see three decreases and only one increase - in 2023 - to 119.4. This is a sign that in most budgets, new investments in plants were less than the depreciation quotas of past ones.
Manufacturing Numbers
The data was processed by InfoCamere on over 623,000 unlisted companies that have always presented their financial statements in ordinary form in the period 2019-24. The photograph frames all sectors of activity. And the trend does not change if we focus only on manufacturing, to which almost half of the total value of the plants detected by the financial statements belongs. In this sector in 2020 there was an increase of 33.8 points compared to the previous year, then alternating plus and minus signs, with a drop of 1.5% in the last year. In manufacturing, the average value of fixed assets in 2024 is 2.12 million euros, the highest. Among the sectors with more companies, only transport comes close (1.67 million).
Increased depreciation
With the Budget Bill for 2026, as stated in the Programmatic Budget Document (PDB) sent to Brussels, there will be "a specific measure to favour investments in tangible assets through the increase of the acquisition cost valid for their depreciation". The total allocation will be about 4 billion euros, "even if - Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said on the sidelines of last Friday's Council of Ministers - we are evaluating the possibility of using the mid-term review of the Cohesion Policy to significantly increase these resources".
After the parenthesis of the Transition 5.0 plan - which will close at the end of the year together with the bonus Ires - the mechanism of increased depreciation, already used in the past, will therefore return. The measure is currently scheduled for one year, not ideal for business planning. The president of Confindustria, Emanuele Orsini, last Friday reiterated the need for 'an industrial plan for the country in three years', with a 'powerful manoeuvre' and 'simple measures such as super and hyper depreciation'.
