The Department of General Accounts (RGS) publishes the study "Regionalized Social Expenditure - Year 2002"

The Department of General Accounts has released the annual study, prepared by the Inspectorate General for Public Administrations Finance (Ispettorato Generale per la Finanza delle Pubbliche Amministrazioni - Igepa), that describes the distribution of public expenditure at regional level for the year 2002.

The study updates the results of a line of research that was initiated in 1993 to collect and provide information on the reallocation of resources by the Government to the regions, intended as geographical areas.

The study focuses on all the payments for final expenditure (current and capital expenditure) incurred by the Government, broken down by region of destination. Among the entries, we find wages and salaries, purchase of goods and services, transfers to public administrations and bodies, to companies and families, interests, direct investments and contributions to investments. Expenditures for the reimbursement of loans are excluded from the study.

As in the previous years, the study does not only analyze the National budget expenditure, but it also covers the expenditure of the majority of the Central Government Bodies and Institutions (Social Security Agencies, National Roads Agency - Anas, National Research Council - Cnr, Italian Red Cross - Cri, National Institute of Occupational Safety and Prevention - Ispesl, Institute for Foreign Trade - Ice, Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and the Environment - Enea and State Monopolies - Monopoli di Stato) and the expenditure covered by funds financed by government resources.

The study examines an expenditure total of approximately 540 billion Euros, 434 of which have been "regionalized", that is attributed over the territory, while the remaining 107 billions have not been allocated at territorial level being, for the most part, just book entries or corrections and offsets of revenues or expenditures abroad.

The document comprises four sections:

· the first section presents the expenditure allocation of the State budget and provides - thanks to the cross-classification by Region, economic categories and functions-objective - useful information for drawing a general picture of the public intervention in the different sectors and for each geographical area and it also provides an useful tool for subsequent analyses by other Institutes (the National Institute of Statistics - Istat, for the construction of Regional public accounts; the Institute for Studies and Economic Analyses - Isae, for the evaluations of the implementation of federalism).Among the most significant changes from the previous editions, we wish to mention the important innovation that has been introduced in terms of the level of detail of the functional classification of the expenditure. In fact, the spread of the functions (in other words, of the purposes for which the expenditure is incurred) has been extended from 16 to 60 in order to satisfy the numerous requests that were made by during the research.

· the second section analyses the expenditure of the public Bodies and Institutions, and

· the third section analyzes the expenditures covered by Funds financed by government resources;

· the appendix contains a detailed description of the expenditure for interventions in depressed areas.