The project of the Minister of Economic Development Flavio Zanonato for the rationalization of municipal utilities. The minister's plan envisages partial or total exemption from the Stability Pact for proceeds from the sale of shares in subsidiaries for administrations. However, those proceeds must be used for investments.
The provision would concern all Municipalities, regardless of their size, and could lead many administrations to evaluate the possibility of reducing their controlling shares in multiservices, also in the light of the rally in the sector at Piazza Affari, which in the last 12 months has seen companies such as Acea, Hera and above all Iren and A2A make sensational leaps, recovering a total of approximately 1,8 billion euro in capitalisation.
Zanonato's idea is to open a competitive procedure for the sale of shareholdings, thus creating a real market for municipal companies, with the possibility, moreover, of offering some incentives to potential buyers. In this way the ailing balance sheets of the utilities, which weigh on the municipalities they belong to, could breathe again.
