Fabrizio Paenzona bluntly attacks Minister Tremonti for the provision of the maneuver which reduces depreciation on investments made by all concessionaires to 1% (motorways, airports, ports, waste-to-energy plants up to cemeteries) because "it is an intolerable, provocative and offensive to rake in money from the State at the expense of service managers who had been called precisely by appealing to private capital to be able to build those infrastructures which the country needs enormously and which public finance alone cannot provide".
Palenzona speaks in his capacity as president of Aiscat, the association of motorway concessionaires, but his reasoning applies to all those services that have been entrusted to private individuals so that they can make the necessary investments to make them more modern and efficient, and which then pay off through the management of the service itself.
“But if it takes 100 years – declares Palenzona – to amortize an investment, who will ever be able to find the necessary funds in the bank to finance them? Basically, a law created to increase state revenues by removing some fat from the concessionaires risks having deleterious consequences on the whole Italian system, practically blocking any possibility of continuing to make investments in infrastructure."
On the one hand, therefore, the State should collect over 400 million euros in the next four years, but the ways in which this levy takes place risk blocking the development of the country which needs modern infrastructures to be able to regain competitiveness. And then you can't keep changing the rules on the go. This is an aspect of reliability of the entire country which in itself risks increasing the disaffection of international investors who, as we can see in recent days, despite the maneuver which should lead to a balanced public budget in 2014, continue to distance themselves from both from bonds and shares of Italian companies and banks.
But Palenzona did not limit himself to protest.” We realize - he said - that the consolidation of public finances is a goal that must concern everyone, certainly not just the wealthiest retirees. And therefore we are willing to dialogue with the Government and Parliament to find ways of contributing to the collective effort, which however do not compromise the future of investments and therefore the same possibilities of accelerating the growth rate of the entire country."
The Undersecretary for Infrastructures Castelli made an embarrassed ex officio defense of the Government manoeuvre, however, agreeing with Palenzona about the risks it could cause for development and assuring his commitment so that the methods of this can be corrected in parliament tax levy.
