Between the disputes over land registry and justice and a one-year electoral campaign that will link the administrative offices in June to the next policies, an acceleration of about 6 times in the actual expenditure of Pnrr projects will have to make its way. Because in the concrete terms of the investments, the real challenge of the Plan is played between this year and the next: after a debut that has achieved the 51 official objectives to obtain the first annual installment, but has kept away from the original spending plans.
In the green background tables that cover the 2,447 pages of the NRP complete with the annexes sent to Brussels, 2021 should have recorded an expenditure of 13.7 billion. The majority of the funds were destined for interventions already foreseen by the Italian programs, in which the Recovery is limited to replacing the national funds; but a portion was dedicated to new projects, not included in the trends and called to accelerate growth.
The final balance of the first year
The final balance of the first year, on the other hand, speaks a different language. Effective spending stopped at 5.1 billion, 37.2% of the initial target. The final balance can still be updated with the verification of the Pnrr requirements financed with national funds and consistent with the objectives of the Plan. But the figure, the result above all of the reinterpretations of the next objectives, which accumulate over 35 billion on average per year. And it is focused on the first group of measures, in which the NRP changes the source of funding but not the dynamics of the economy. Almost half of real spending has gone from high-speed rail, also thanks to the possibility of attributing ex post to the NRP about 800 million already paid in 2020; 1.2 billion went to eco-bonuses in construction. The innovation incentives of the «Transition 4.0» companies absorbed 990 million, against the 1,713 attributed to this item in the original program. And another 390 million went to the school, mainly for construction.
Last year, such a result was not a big problem all in all. Because the economy has taken care of itself to produce a much more intense rebound than expected. And because the community checks that authorized the 21 billion installment focused on 49 “qualitative” objectives (these are the milestone, such as the rules to be approved on governance and administrative strengthening or the adoption of programs such as the Gol on the employment of young people or national plans such as the one on hydrogeological risk), limiting the quantitative targets measured with concrete achievements such as admission to the Simest Fund of 5,204 SMEs (the goal was at least 4 thousand) or the signing of contracts with the “thousand experts” for the Regions. On the contrary: as the Parliamentary Budget Office explained in the hearing on Thursday 14 April on the Def, taking up the data provided by the Ministry of Economy to Parliament, the lower-than-expected spending helped to reduce the trend deficit, thus contributing to the opening fiscal space for new aid without deviation.
What changes this year
But now the picture changes. Because this year the quantitative objectives destined for community examination are 17. And above all because the autonomous thrust of growth has cooled under the blows of war and inflation. In such a complicated context, the contribution to growth attributed to the NRP becomes even more crucial. Which in the meantime has already changed precisely due to the reshaping of the spending calendar: in 2021 four of the six decimals of GDP expected at the beginning have disappeared, and in the updated estimates the Plan ends in 2026 with an accumulated + 3.2% instead of + 3.6% calculated last year.