Pnrr spending does not take off: 49.5 billion, 25% of the total

On the first day of the third edition of 'Missione Italia', the annual event promoted by the mayors of Anci to take stock of the Pnrr of the municipalities, numbers emerged that explain the concern expressed on Wednesday in the control room by Economy Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti. The updated spending counter for the projects of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, as indicated by the data of the General Inspectorate for the Pnrr of the Mef led by Carmine di Nuzzo, is stationary at 49.5 billion (just 3.9 billion more than the 45.6 billion at the end of 2023), of which almost 30 billion related to automatic tax credits for building bonuses and incentives for businesses.

Actual public investment, in short, remains at around 20 billion. This is a disappointing level, the one offered by the official census of the ReGis platform, which further increases the mountain of expenditure required to complete all the Plan's interventions by the current deadline of 30 June 2026. The figure recorded by the Ministry of the Economy's computerised brain continues to be weighed down by the stumbling blocks in reporting (see the article opposite) and the picture could also evolve rapidly, at least in the hopes of Palazzo Chigi: an acceleration is destined to arrive, for example, thanks to the activation of Transition 5.0, whose implementing decree is completing its long gestation phase and now only awaits registration by the Court of Auditors. On that measure, there are 6.3 billion at stake, which are, however, totalled once again by tax credits and not by the central strand of capital expenditure by public administrations.

Today, this item only seems to explode in municipal accounts. According to the tables illustrated to the audience of mayors by the State Accountant General, Biagio Mazzotta, in 2023 local investments amounted to 17.1 billion, double the 8.7 billion of the two-year period 2017-2018. A race that shows no sign of stopping: in the first half of this year they reached 8.64 billion, 31.4% more than in the same period last year. The trend is the child of the NRP, of course - there are 521 single project codes for integrated urban plans financed by the Next Generation Eu alone, 33 of which are in the works execution phase - but also of funding for small and medium-sized works.

The future, with the new EU fiscal governance starting in January, is an unknown. For Minister Raffaele Fitto, a possible new commissioner, 'the European Union will have to build dynamics similar to the Next Generation Eu to tackle the green and digital transition', still rewarding growth-oriented investments. Italy's performance on the Pnrr is also crucial in this perspective. A method, even before being a programme, that Fitto hopes 'will become the rule in the implementation and spending of public administration'. Without, however, deluding himself too much about the possibility of the country's sudden hyper-efficiency. "It is a foregone conclusion," the minister stressed, "that implementation problems will continue to exist; living in Italy and not on the Moon, we should always remember the 34% spending of the 2020-2026 cohesion programming funds.

But now accelerating is a must. This is why Fitto is not backing down on the implementation of Article 2 of the Pnrr quater decree-law (19/2024) and on the deadline announced, not without arousing ill-feeling, to the owners: by 23 July they will have to update the actual state of implementation of the Plan. Photograph in hand, the government will consider the exercise of substitutive powers against the implementers that are late with respect to the procedural and financial timetables.