Decrees 5.0 late, the internal robot market collapses

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High interest rates. And then crucial elections coming up in Europe and the United States, wars that do not abate in many parts of the world. A climate of uncertainty and high-priced credit which in general has always been the “enemy” of any investment, a less than brilliant picture to which in Italy there is an additional problem: the delay in finalizing the measures to encourage investments 5.0.

Thus, for machine tools, the internal market from the point of view of orders drops by just under 20%, the fifth consecutive decline which brings the absolute value to decidedly anomalous levels, this time downwards. If the post-Covid rebound had in fact relaunched the demand for investments, “thawing” what had remained on stand-by during the long period of uncertainty of the pandemic, now another form of waiting: that of incentives 5.0

Negotiations with the European Commission to reconvert part of the funds from the Repower EU chapter on tax bonuses for new connected and “green” plants have been unblocked at the end of 2023, following the decree approved on 26 February by the Council of Ministers, published in the Official Journal on 2 March , more than a month and a half later, the implementing decrees are still missing to make the measures operational, which are worth a total of 6.3 billion euros, with tax credits that can reach up to 45%, more than double the level current.

The Minister of Made in Italy Adolofo Urso reassured businesses, explaining a few days ago that even if Transition 5.0 will be fully operational with the release of an ad hoc platform in early May, «businesses must know that even the investments made by the first January and who are in line with the Transition 5.0 objectives will be able to access the tax credits provided by law”.

THE MARKET

However, the market does not seem to have moved in this direction and the feeling is that today companies that can wait are postponing investments in order to take advantage of the incentives, which are much more powerful than those provided by the standard 4.0 mechanisms, which indicate a tax credit equal to to 20%. The decline in orders is actually similar for the domestic market and exports, with a significant difference: setting the average level for 2021 at 100, Italy now finds itself at a level almost halved (55), while the export markets are below the average by only 10%. Such a weak first quarter, in the recent history of national demand, is only found in the Covid period, the start of 2020.