Vices (many) and virtues (few) of the Pnrr
What do the economists Boeri and Perotti argue in the book released today “Pnrr – The great binge” (Feltrinelli). Stefano Feltri's article taken from his blog Appunti
Have you noticed that Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni never talks about Pnrr? And that money seems to have left the public debate to the point that in the 2024 budget law the parties are arguing over a few hundred million missing coverages like in the old days, as if the total 237 billion mobilized by the recovery and resilience plan had never existed ?
The Pnrr is so important that it has triggered a government crisis (from Conte 2 to Draghi in February 2021) but so complicated that it is very difficult to have an overview of where it really is and what results it can produce.
For this reason, the book that comes out today by Feltrinelli is destined to cause discussion: Pnrr – The great binge , written by two very well-known Bocconi economists, Tito Boeri and Roberto Perotti. Boeri was president of the INPS, Perotti was commissioner of the spending review, they both know the state machine inside out.
Are we winning the Pnrr challenge?
I anticipate Boeri and Perotti's response: “Our fear is that we are losing it. It is not so much a question of delays in the implementation of the Plan. The fact is that we risk finding ourselves a more indebted country than before without having effectively addressed the structural problems that have weighed on Italy's economic decline for decades."
Boeri and Perotti's book lines up numbers and measures, and combines understandable stories with indecipherable acronyms and procedures.
The two economists support a very clear thesis (too much money, in too little time, organized in such a way as to make it impossible to reach the objectives) but also leave some questions. In particular, a crucial one: is the problem the Pnrr or how does the Italian public administration manage resources in normal times?
Many of the delays, setup errors and waste in the use of Pnrr funds seem to be due more to the "country system" than to European funds and the specific approach of the plan.
Indeed, at least the Pnrr has introduced binding commitments and taught ministries, local authorities and public companies to think in terms of objectives and tight deadlines.
This is already a step forward, even if many of the goals were to be missed and too many billions were wasted.
TOWARDS TECHNICAL GOVERNMENT?
The second question that the book raises is political. The launch of the Pnrr overlapped with a government crisis, will the same happen for its final phase?
The authors do not venture into this slippery terrain of predictions, but they have left me wondering: the more months and years go on, the greater the risk becomes of losing tens and tens of billions if the right things are not done in right time.
(Excerpt from Stefano Feltri's Appunti blog ; here is the full version )
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/vizi-molti-e-virtu-poche-del-pnrr/ on Tue, 31 Oct 2023 13:15:47 +0000.