Twenty proposals to improve the public sector and support growth. This is the content of the document Luigi Abete, president of Assonime, sent to the Government this morning. In addition to Prime Minister Mario Monti, the text was also received by the Minister of Economic Development, Corrado Passera, the head of Relations with Parliament, Piero Giarda, and the Deputy Minister of the Treasury, Vittorio Grilli.
In the document, the association that brings together Italian joint-stock companies hopes for interventions to alleviate the liquidity and credit crisis for businesses, including the announced measures aimed at accelerating payments from the public administration to companies. Assonime also invites the Government to decisively pursue the containment of public spending and underlines the need to free up resources for growth, by reducing taxes on work and business. Lastly, the association indicates some measures aimed at improving the legal framework for business activity.
Here is a summary of the list of proposals:
CERTAINTY IN PAYMENTS AND IN THE BEHAVIOR OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
Proposal 1: Pay off the commercial debts accumulated by the public administration by alienating public assets. Immediately transpose the new European directive on late payments.
Proposal 2: Imposing by decree that in authorization procedures, including those in progress, there is always a decision-maker of last resort, within a certain period, activating where necessary substitutive powers. Sanction the inertial behavior of the administrations.
Proposal 3: For infrastructures that generate new public revenues, provide that the public contribution can be covered with a share of the higher revenues produced by the investment.
Proposal 4: Quickly complete the legislative initiatives aimed at circumscribing and limiting compensation to local authorities for the construction of plants and infrastructures.
STABILILY CONTAIN AND IMPROVE PUBLIC EXPENDITURE
Proposal 5: Reduce the annual expenditure on public administration salaries by 10 percent through interventions to block turnover, merge functions and administrations, staff mobility, strengthening the autonomy of management and implementing incentive salary policies.
Proposal 6: Set a target of reducing expenditure on intermediate consumption by 10 percent by increasing the efficiency of selection processes and competition between suppliers. Extend the possibility of using central purchasing bodies also in the public works sector.
Proposal 7: Applying standard costs to all public expenditure, especially in regions and local administrations, and deforesting companies owned by local authorities, with savings in the order of 9 billion euros.
Proposal 8: Separate those who buy health services from those who deliver them and give citizens the right to choose in the allocation of the per capita share of the national health fund, with appropriate adjustments to ensure the public service throughout the national territory and its financing.
Proposal 9: Carrying out a university reform based on the full financial, managerial and educational autonomy of the universities and the allocation of university funds based on the enrollment choices of the students and on the evaluation of the quality of the teaching centres.
REDUCE TAXES ON THE LESS WONDERFUL, EMPLOYMENT AND BUSINESS AND SIMPLIFY THE TAX SYSTEM
Proposal 10: To stop the deflationary spiral, avoid the increase in the ordinary VAT rate and the reduced rate of 10%, which is scheduled for next October, by finding alternative resources.
Proposal 11: Waive the derogation from the ordinary VAT regime, which allows the super-reduced rate of 4 per cent to be applied to a list of goods, entirely allocating the increased revenue to transfers to support the income of less well-off families.
Proposal 12: Reduce the IRPEF rate on the first bracket of income from 23 to 20 per cent.
Proposal 13: To move towards a system in which all specific tax deductions and deductions from personal income are replaced by a single IRPEF deductibility ceiling for each taxpayer, increased by a fixed amount for each dependent family member.
Proposal 14: To contain the cost of labour, allocate 5 billion euros to incentives for the permanent hiring of low-skill workers and workers on atypical contracts, the long-term unemployed, young people and women.
Proposal 15: Make permanent and strengthen the tax relief on the productivity wage negotiated at company level.
Proposal 16: Aim for the elimination of all contributions and tax breaks for businesses, and their replacement, for both IRES/IRPEF and IRAP purposes, with a single deduction for research, innovation and environmental efficiency expenses for the period, within a ceiling fixed in proportion to the tax base.
IMPROVE THE INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORK FOR BUSINESS ACTIVITY
Proposal 17: Return to the exclusive legislative competence of the State: large transport and navigation networks, airports of commercial importance, commercial ports of national importance; the production and transport of energy of national importance; the order of communication (excluding communication of exclusive regional interest).
Proposal 18: Avoid introducing constraints on the business activity through the emergency decree. Ensure, through the preventive assessment of costs and benefits, that the interventions are necessary and proportionate to achieve objectives of general interest.
Proposal 19: Reduce the time required for civil justice with better organization, eliminating smaller offices and branch offices and merging the courts of appeal. Making the execution phase more efficient.
Proposal 20: Bring managerial choices, purchases and management of public companies back to strict criteria of efficiency, excluding improper interference from politics. Divest non-strategic public shareholdings.
Download the PDF with the complete document:
Attachments: 20 propositions to improve the public sector and support growth.pdf
