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By Giuseppe Fonte
ROME (Reuters) – Italy will spend about 13 billion euros ($12. 62 billion) less this year on Europe’s post-COVID recovery budget than it had planned in the past, a Treasury document showed, highlighting the country’s unease in implementing investment programs.
The eurozone’s third-largest economy is eligible for around €191. 5 billion in grants and reasonable loans from the EU’s Recovery and Resilience Fund (RRF), designed to help the bloc’s 27 countries emerge from the pandemic.
The Treasury’s annual Economic and Financial Document (DEF), published by Reuters as yet to be published, says only about $21 billion of $191. 5 billion will be spent through the end of this year, leaving $170 billion to invest until 2026.
The latest estimate compares with a previous target of 33. 7 billion euros that was achieved in April, according to the DEF.
In recent years, Italy has consistently been below monetary aid from Brussels from its European partners. It controlled spending only a part of its normal EU budget in the last budget cycle, the lowest percentage at the time after Spain.
In the arrival to the DEF document, the Minister of Economy, Daniele Franco, said that the downward revision is due to the late release of some public works, penalized by the rise in the prices of raw materials.
Earlier this year, Prime Minister Mario Draghi earmarked more than €10 billion through 2026 to help structured corporations cope with exorbitant energy costs and other costs exacerbated by the war in Ukraine, to delays.
Already in April, the Treasury admitted that spending was slower than expected and therefore reduced its estimate of the effect on the expansion of the EU budget and the reforms it wants to implement to offload them.
The Treasury estimates that it can recover the lost ground and in the DEF raises its forecast of expenditure of the European budget in 2023 to 12,000 million euros.
“The recent maximum update of government spending projections particularly lowers the estimate for 2022, but consequently increases projections for the final years of the plan,” the Treasury said.
Rome has secured almost 67 billion euros in the EU budget through the assembly of political “objectives and milestones” agreed with Brussels. Some $46 billion has already been received.
It is eligible for another €19 billion at the end of the years, provided it can meet the 55 targets and milestones set for the current part of 2022.
($1 = 1. 0302 euros)
(This tale goes back to remove superfluous words from the title)
(Reporting through Giuseppe Fonte; Editing by Gavin Jones and Jonathan Oatis)