Bureaucratic delays registered in Italian infrastructure projects funded by the post-pandemic national recovery plan, PNRR, may result in incomplete projects and the country missing out on a strong opportunity for economic development, warns Italian trade association Assofermet.
Such significant allocations of resources risk remaining unfinished in the absence of a simpler bureaucracy that allows for effective grounding of the planned works.
The PNRR scheme will bring great benefits to the Italian and international economy as well as the steel sector. Members of the association will take part in tenders, and both scrap suppliers and distributors will act as key suppliers.
“Italy should speed up the process to start the projects … The government will have to be more prepared and organised both for obtaining the fourth instalment and for managing the huge resources made available,” Assofermet says in a note sent to Kallanish. It highlights the long delays seen in Italy in agreeing on the reception of the third instalment of PNRR funds.
Thanks to the simplification of paperwork, some railway and port infrastructure has received funding and is being implemented. The improvement of the entire Italian economy, in which infrastructure is highly strategic, depends on the successful achievement of the PNRR.
Assofermet sees the development of all green hydrogen projects as the right direction to implement the energy transition. Italy has vowed to develop several hydrogen valleys that will help promote the decarbonisation of the industry. “If Italy succeeds in having a decarbonised metallurgy and steel industry before other countries, Italian products will be more competitive both on EU markets and outside the [European] Union territory,” the association concludes.
