The rcredit crunching, high bank commissions and public administration payment delays are "worrisome phenomena" for businesses, large and small. This is the alarm raised today by Confindustria, consulted by the Senate's Industry Commission, which is examining the decree re-proposing bank commissions on loans and credit lines.
The three phenomena travel together: the credit restriction - explains the director of the tax and finance area of Confindustria, Elio Schettino - is happening "both in terms of quantity disbursed and of costs applied. There remains a problem of transparency and comparability of commissions, which can significantly affect the final cost of the loan”. Schettino presents some figures elaborated by the Viale dell'Astronomia Study Center on Bankitalia data on the basis of which loans to companies in Italy decreased by 0,1% in January after the -1% in December (i.e. 20 billion) and -2% in November. ”Added to this contraction is a high level of the cost of credit. The interest rate paid for bank loans by Italian companies rose rapidly in 2011, settling on average at 4,1% in January 2012, almost one point more than the 3,2% in June 2011”. The situation is becoming difficult because "interest margins, other charges, requests for guarantees and limits on the volumes disbursed are increasing".
And to complicate the situation, the delays in paying the public administration. The financial restriction, underlines Schettino, “is made more serious by the lengthening of payment times both in the public sector and between companies. To obtain a payment from the public administration, Italian companies waited 180 days in 2011 (128 in 2009). In other economies the opposite occurs: payment times for administration have been reduced in France to 64 days (from 70) and in Germany to 35 days (from 40)”. The lengthening of payments between companies is similar: times have lengthened from 88 days in 2009 to 103 last year.
Confindustria does not hide its concerns. “Despite the recent improvements for banks deriving from the lowering of the spread on Italian government bonds and the injection of liquidity by the ECB, the fear remains that the credit crunch will continue in the coming months. The continuation of this situation - says Schettino - raises serious concerns. In fact, the lack of credit is one of the main factors holding back Italian companies: in addition to hindering their activity, it penalizes their competitiveness with respect to foreign companies, in particular with respect to German ones, which enjoy much more favorable credit conditions thanks to the better German situation in terms of public debt”. The most exposed are small and medium-sized companies, underlines Schettino: "The Italian small and medium-sized enterprises are most penalized, which make greater use of bank credit and have less bargaining power than banks".
