Construction will collapse in 2024 "thanks" to the Government's low blow

With the excuse of the 'out of control' deficit, Economy Minister Giorgetti and Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni canceled any remnants of discounts on invoices and credit transfers remaining in the construction sector.
As usual, creating chaos and confusion among operators in the sector.
Substantially, the institutions of invoice discounting and the transfer of tax credits deriving from building renovation works were expanded and strengthened during the pandemic with the famous superbonus, but not only that.
In this way, those who did not have the fiscal capacity or could not afford to spend crazy amounts on renovations or to improve the energy efficiency of their home benefited from this legislation.
Obviously this had an impact on the deficit, but this was more than offset by the economic growth and impact on GDP it had.
An investment is judged good or bad according to its impact and not its cost.
In fact, public debt in recent years – despite the fear of deficit – has decreased by more than 10 percentage points in three years.
The only studies that judge the effect of the Superbonus negatively are often biased and unfortunately are too often relaunched by the media system, however they are easily criticised.
For example, the Observatory's research on the public accounts of the former PD parliamentarian Cottarelli is inspired by some more than singular statements by the Bank of Italy according to which only half of the increase in private construction interventions recorded from 2020 to today would be additional states.
According to Bank of Italy technicians, the other half of the growth would have occurred anyway.
But this absolutely does not add up with the extraordinary growth numbers of the construction sector, never previously recorded, or the comparison with other foreign states.
In fact, Italy was the only country in which the sector grew by 30% in 4 years.
In the other countries it has remained essentially immobile.
But returning to government action, last year there was a substantial end to the super bonus, and what it entailed was largely predictable: everyone rushed to close the construction sites at the end of 2023 so as not to lose the benefits.
This obviously led to a greater impact on the deficit but, in fact, also caused the GDP in the 4th quarter to be higher than expected.
With the latest decree, however, not only is the transfer of the 70% superbonus blocked for those who had submitted the documentation by the end of 2022 to start construction sites, but above all the discount on the invoice is eliminated – which in this case was still of 110% – for non-profit organisations, i.e.
for residential facilities for the elderly and disabled, and for the area of seismic craters.
In practice the government takes it out on the weakest, the elderly and those affected by earthquakes.
On this last aspect it seems that the government has partially backtracked after the protests of the centre-right local administrators, but only with a skimpy budget of 400 million.
Which obviously will not be enough since, according to data from last summer, there are still 14 thousand displaced families.
And only in the last period, precisely because the invoice discount had remained only in that part of Italy, many construction companies were finally starting to rebuild areas that were still completely razed to the ground.
In short, it seems that 2024 will mark the collapse for Italian construction.
So yes, dear Minister Giorgetti, we will see how the public finances fare.