Committee on the reorganisation of the RGE

As part of an effort to streamline procedures, the Committee on the reorganization of the RGE, which is envisaged by Law No. 39 of 7 April 2011 and is composed of 2 experts in economics, 2 representatives of the Ministry of the Economy and Finance and 2 representatives of Istat (Italy’s Statistical Office) suggested that the publication of the RGE be suspended as of 2012 and its whole content be included in already existing publications. Within the limits of the mandate conferred upon the Committee, the latter proposed a more synthetic version of the document (in two volumes) to be submitted as one publication in April, as envisaged by Law No. 39 of 2011. The deadline for the submittal of the RGE for the year 2010 was postponed to September 2011.

The Committee’s proposal to abolish the RGE was motivated on grounds that the information provided by general government and Italy’s statistical office has grown remarkably over the years and that several sectoral reports are attached to the DEF. More specifically, the Committee has pointed out that planning of policy scenario targets, end-of – year macroeconomic and public finance analyses are contained in the DEF (submitted to Parliament by Government in April), in the Annual Report on the country’s situation published by Italy’s Statistical Office in May and in the Annual Report by the Bank of Italy, also published in May. In addition, various Ministries and general government bodies publish reports on issues falling within their remit. It should be noted that sectoral reports are annexed to the DEF relating to: programmes in underutilised areas (for which the Ministry of Economic Development is responsible); programmes for the realization of major national infrastructure projects (for which the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport is responsible, as provided for in Article 1, paragraph 1, of Law No. 443 of 21 December 2001); progress report on the implementation of commitments to reduce GHG emissions and the relevant policies (for which the Ministry of the Environment and Land and Sea Protection is responsible); the resources allotted to the Regions and the autonomous provinces of Trento and Bolzano, as well as reports relating to the Government budget.

In addition, by April 10 the Ministry of the Economy and Finance publishes a report annexed to the DEF on the savings achieved in procurement by general government bodies (Financial Law 2008, Art. 2, paragraphs 569-574) and on the proposal of the Ministry of Economic Development in agreement with the Ministry of the Economy and Finance, as well as a government report on programmes in favour of business activies adopted during the previous year (the end-of April deadline is close to April 10 – under Article 1, paragraph 1 of Law No. 266 of 7 August 1997 and Article 10 of Legislative Decree No. 123 of 1998).

Typical and important content of the RGE is the information provided on health expenditure, whose publication is now a legal requirement under Art. 19- quinquies of Legislative Decree 502 of 1992 as later amended. This information is requested by the Court of Auditors in the JUDGEMENT OF EQUALIZATION OF THE ACCOUNTS aimed at ascertaining the conformity of the results of the State accounts to the budget law through a comparison between the results of the final balance with the budget law and the documents held by the “Corte dei conti” usually during the month of June.