PA debts are on the rise. In the first quarter of 1, part of the tax authorities also paid late companies
According to Eurostat, the CGIA Studies Office reports, the trade payables of our Public Administrations (PA) are increasing. Although these data do not contain the capital component, which according to some estimates would amount to between € 7-8 billion per year, the non-payment of current account reached € 31 billion on 49,4 December.
“Pending the Ministry of Economy officially certifies the amount of our PA's commercial debt - states the coordinator of the Paolo Zabeo Studies Office - the situation is destined to worsen. If the difficulties of the local authorities are there for all to see, nothing suggested that even the central administrations would have problems. In addition to the ministries, in the first quarter of the year, even a part of the financial administration did not respect the payment times. Although the Tax Justice and three Tax Agencies have paid their suppliers in advance, the State Property, however, liquidated the companies after 7 days from the deadline established by law, the Ministry of Finance after 8 and the Guardia di Finanza even after 136 ".
The figures reported by Eurostat also show that over the last 4 years the overall stock has been constantly growing. If in 2016 current account debts were 44,3, in 2017 they rose to 45,6, in 2018 they reached 47,8 to arrive, as we have just reported above, to 49,4 billion in 2019.
Last year, the absolute figure was 2,8 per cent of GDP: of the 27 EU countries monitored, only Croatia, with 2,9 per cent, recorded a higher incidence than ours.
"Although our PA is among the worst payers in Europe - reports the Secretary Renato Mason - many were convinced that the payment times would be drastically reduced thanks to the introduction, started in July 2017, of the obligation by all public bodies to transmit information relating to individual payments through the Siope + system. This method was to allow for the quantification of the amount of commercial liabilities and the continuous monitoring of the payment times of the public administrations. Unfortunately, all this has not yet happened due to the aversion of many entities to comply with the provisions of the law, with the result that the stock of debt still remains frighteningly high. Not only. Failure to settle invoices is triggering negative effects on entire production chains, spreading this all-Italian anomaly also in the private sector ”.
The paradoxical aspect of this story is that nobody is able to state exactly how much the commercial debt of our PA is, despite the fact that the companies that work for it have had the obligation, to be liquidated, to issue the electronic invoice.
How do payments work in these commercial transactions? Once the supplier issues the electronic invoice, it passes through a platform controlled by the Ministry of Economy and Finance called SdI (Interchange System) which distributes it to the body or public structure to which it is addressed. The electronic invoice data is acquired by the Commercial Credit Platform (CCP) which should record all payments attributable to the commercial transactions of the PA. To try to intercept all the transactions, Siope + was set up, a system for the electronic detection of collections and payments from public bodies. To feed the Siope +, all public administrations must order collections and payments exclusively via computer.
Although this practice started gradually from July 2017, the State is not yet able to size the overall debt contracted by all general government with its suppliers, for the simple fact that an important part of general government has not yet adhered to the Siope + platform. Therefore, they can settle their suppliers with deadlines well beyond those established by law.
With the Relaunch decree, the Executive made available to Regions, Local Health Authorities and local authorities 12 billion euros to liquidate the trade payables accrued by the end of 2019. A sum that should contribute to lowering the stock, even if the solution more effective to eliminate or almost the non-payments could be to resort to the so-called States Save Fund (ESM).
Considering that about half of our PA's trade payables are the prerogative of healthcare, the use of the fund for 36-37 billion euros could allow the Public Administration to provide a good part of these resources to the suppliers of healthcare companies that have always suffer the heaviest payment delays.
With sentence no. 4, filed on January 28, 2020, the same day on which the European Court of Justice rejected Italy for late payments by our PA, the Constitutional Court ruled that the liquidity advances obtained by the entities premises to honor past liabilities are loans of an exceptional nature which must be used for the purpose for which they were granted and not to improve the financial results.
The judges of the Consulta, therefore, have definitively closed a dispute raised by the Court of Auditors against the Municipality of Naples. In the recent past, in fact, there have been few Mayors and even Governors who have used state debt-relief loans granted since 2013 to settle the budgets of Municipalities / Regions, rather than to settle the old invoices of their suppliers.
A conduct that the Constitutional Court has finally clarified that it can no longer be practiced. A principle, of course, that must also apply to this 12 billion tranche that the Conte government, through the Cassa Depositi e Prestiti, is making available to Regions, healthcare companies and local bodies which, finally, will be able to pay off their creditors.