Also for the current year, a small part has arrived and will continue to arrive directly on the current account of companies. A substantial part, on the other hand, will be allocated when the companies activate some specific operations.
However, of the 64,7 billion euros of direct aid made available by the Conte and Draghi governments to economic activities to deal with the Covid emergency, the CGIA Studies Office estimates that just under 50 percent has not yet been accredited, since they are resources largely provided for by the 2021 Budget Law.
Although these 64,7 billion euros represent a very significant amount, only 22,8 billion are the resources disbursed as non-repayable funds (equal to 35,2 per cent of the total). Also, if compared to the approximately 350 billion euros of contraction in turnover recorded by Italian companies in 2020, these 64,7 billion "cover" only 18,5 percent of total lost collections.
It is clear that the Draghi government must accelerate not only on the vaccination front, but also on the speed of delivery of measures to support micro enterprises and self-employed workers. The next support decree, in fact, will be an important test case. Not only because the economic dimension will have to be decidedly more consistent than the measures previously approved, but also because they will have to arrive in the current account of entrepreneurs in a very short time.
We would like to remind you that of the 35,5 billion euros of aid so far foreseen for the current year, 6,5 will allow the Inps deduction for new hires and another 6,3 will be disbursed as tax credit for investments. If we add the 2,5 billion Inps deduction from VAT numbers that lost more than a third of turnover last year, these 15,3 billion euros (equal to 43 percent of total aid for 2021), hardly they may be the prerogative of micro enterprises and self-employed workers who have been the most affected by the crisis.
First, because at this moment they certainly don't need to hire; secondly because they certainly do not have the liquidity to activate new investments; thirdly, due to the absence of the decree of the Ministry of Labor which had to be approved within the first days of last March, they cannot yet benefit from the INPS contribution discount.
In other words, underlines the CGIA, our main problem is not the closures imposed by decree by our Government, given that currently in all the other main European countries the confinement measures are more stringent than ours, but the economic aid, which gives we arrived insufficiently and with serious delay. Elsewhere, however, they were paid promptly and with very important dimensions.
Putting Italian micro and small businesses to safety means safeguarding an important slice of the economy of our country. The numbers speak for themselves. Net of civil servants, businesses with fewer than 20 employees make up 98 percent of the companies in the country and employ the majority of Italians, that is to say 54,6 percent of the employed. Furthermore, these micro realities produce 37 per cent of the annual national added value, a score not found in any other large EU country.
With an economy that is based on very small companies, but with economic / employment performance of giants, the competitiveness of our country is affected above all by the absence of large companies. For many decades, in fact, the latter have disappeared, certainly not due to the excessive number of small production companies present in Italy, but due to the inability of the large players, mainly of a public nature, to withstand the challenge launched by globalization.
Until 1985, in fact, Italy was among the world leaders in chemicals, plastics, rubber, steel, aluminum, information technology and pharmaceuticals. Thanks to the role and weight of many large public and private companies (Montedison, Montefibre, Pirelli, Italsider, Alumix, Olivetti, Angelini, etc.), the country's economy revolved around these sectors. After more than 35 years, however, we have lost ground and leadership in almost all these sectors. And this happened not because of a cynical and cheating fate, but as a result of a selection that has relegated them out of the market.
In light of these specificities, the CGIA study office strongly requests that we return to look more carefully at the business world, especially small and micro, given that, for example, the effects of the pandemic are falling with unprecedented violence especially on those in the tertiary sector and services which, if not adequately helped, risk closing permanently.
