It is news from a few days ago that the association of municipal utilities and those of gas distributors presented a complaint to the MISE (the Ministry of Economic Development) on the content of the call for tenders published by the municipality of Udine for the assignment of the gas distribution (a business which for the whole country reaches approximately 4 billion euros). News not worthy of note, if not for being the last episode of an endless story, that of gas races, case study exemplary on the functioning of our public machine.
It was the year two thousand and, on the occasion of the transposition of a Community directive, the government (the competent Minister at the time was Enrico Letta) laid the foundations for the assignment of the distribution service through a tender. The law, which provided for a transitional period of five years so as to approach the expiry of many concessions, introduced a strong discontinuity with respect to the regime then in force based on fully discretionary choices of the granting entities (municipalities).
However, organizing as many as 5200 tenders (there were approximately many concessions at the end of the last millennium) meant throwing the heart beyond any possible obstacle. After seven the legislator, not exactly reactive, realized that 5200 tenders were too many and, in the name of efficiency and cost reduction, established that the competition should be carried out by grouping several municipalities (the "areas"). But how big are these scopes? Finding an optimal size of the territories to serve is, in terms of applied economic analysis, a task that is anything but simple.
It seems that economies of scale exist but for rather small companies. In the mind of the Regulator – who looked to Europe, where, with the exception of Germany, there are few operators – there was the idea that the sector should concentrate. So in 2011, after a few skirmishes with the Unified Conference, 177 areas were defined, a still very high number, to be put out to tender for successive groupings.
Another important problem then emerged: defining the reimbursement values to be recognized to those managers who had lost the tender before the original expiry of the concession, with the risk of an increase in costs for the consumer. The Regulator, with some interventions, managed to mitigate the extent of this reimbursement. Everything took more time (the last ministerial decree came out last July when the tenders were due to start…).
The long story (there are 8 legal provisions, 8 ministerial decrees, 10 resolutions of the Regulatory Authority and, at the moment, not even a tender) has cost a lot in terms of public officials' time and lawyers' fees (many in fact appeals), without any benefit for consumers, with as many as 4 postponements of deadlines (in 2011 the conclusion of the tenders was expected by 2013; if we had started in July, we would have reached the end of 2018) and with investments at a standstill.
After an initial wave of concentrations (the 770 distributors at the end of the 200s were reduced to around 30), the sector also stalled due to the resistance of local politicians who did not see (and do not see) any benefit from the sale (the Public entities hold about XNUMX% of the sector's capital) and the ANCI repeatedly tries to introduce amendments that further postpone the deadlines. But even the small independent distributors fear losing the tenders and are rowing against it.
Some notices are now starting to be published but the signs (see the case of Udine) and the passion for appeals that distinguishes our regulatory arena do not give hope that the process will be completed within the 42 months envisaged. Let's say that nobody wants competition in services.
At this point, some courageous simplifications could be evaluated (for example, drastically reducing the number of areas to 20 regions, with caps on national market shares), otherwise even our young prime minister could turn gray before the tenders are concluded and all the disputes resolved.
