(Finance) – The 2020 situation of regional finance must be framed in the exceptional nature of the pandemic situation and its repercussions on the budgets of the entities, with a reduction in some revenues and greater expenditure needs. The various state interventions have compensated for the negative effects related to the loss of revenue and support for health expenditure.
This is what emerges from the “Report on the financial management of the Regions / Autonomous Provinces” approved by the Autonomy Section of Court of Auditors, in which the accounting judiciary examined the 2018-2020 financial statements contained in the public administrations database (BDAP), highlighting the overall resilience of the Regions to the pandemic impact.
Those with ordinary statute, notes the Court, record a slight increase in current revenues due to the greater state transfers in 2020. The health expenditure of the entire sector of the Regions passes from 122.1 billion euros in 2018 to 136.7 billion in 2020, focusing mostly on the current part of the balance sheet in line with the pandemic scenario that made it necessary to abandon the logic of containment. On the other hand, the trend in health expenditure on capital account is decreasing compared to 2019.
Non-health expenditure – of higher incidence in the Regions with special statute for the main functions – records, in the Regions with ordinary statute, an accentuated growth in 2020, with a greater distribution in transport, social policies and economic development. Furthermore, the planning capacity for the capital account part is lacking, with protracted times for carrying out the interventions and a substantial part of the commitments undertaken, not payable during the year, flowing into the multi-year restricted fund.
Overall – the Court again points out – one can observe increased formation of residues from competence, as a significant part of the overall ones, which however reduce their consistency by 84.33 billion euros in 2018 to 79.75 billion in 2020. The 2018-2020 balances of the Regions are in line with the public finance objectives thanks to the simplification of the latter’s balances regime, as well as the transition to the new balanced budget objectives. The final balance sheet is always positive but, following the deduction of the restricted and set aside quotas from the administration result, a deficit emerges on the whole mainly linked to the liquidity advances fund.
Finally, with differences on the territory, the new debt of the Regions (-1.35% in the last year), by virtue of the low dynamics of capital expenditure and the implementation of restructuring operations. The trends in non-financial debt and in the debt to suppliers component, which are growing strongly in 2020, deserve attention.