Inpgi, the journalists’ social security institution is heading towards default. The leaders try to save him with warm pannicelli

by time news

Contributions with reduced rates compared to those of INPS (with a savings for publishers of 900 million), non-collection of 270 million and 170 million of contribution credits lost in thin air. The evils of the Inpgi, the privatized social security institution for journalists since 1995, come from afar. And while editors thank you for years of gifts and ask for new ones early retirement, the collaborators and freelancers of the separate management risk be expropriated of part of the Inpgi2 assets. Without, however, being able to change the fate of the Institute, whose board of directors has just passed by majority vote a maneuver worth a few tens of millions to avoid the commissioner.

As if that weren’t enough, the same council also approved the construction of areal estate transaction, which modifies the assets of the most precarious workers for the benefit of contracted journalists and gods retirees. So argues a parliamentary question from last year June 17, 2021 which speaks of the “umpteenth unsolvable maneuver, which risks also compromise the healthy coffers of the Inpgi 2, an operation that should take place with the transfer of properties from the “Giovanni Amendola” fund to a separate fund transformed into a SICAF ”.

But what exactly is it about? To understand the story you have to take a step back. “To plug the losses, starting from 2013, the Inpgi has progressively transferred ownership of real estate to the “Giovanni Amendola” real estate fund, of which the Inpgi is the sole shareholder – the same document clarifies – It was decided to implement a revaluation of the real estate assets, a ploy to use capital gains, fictitious, to cover the losses of pension management. In parallel, the sale of the same real estate assets, aimed at covering a deficit (…). The management of these has not always been transparent and advantageous for the Inpgi ”.

So far the recent past. Now that the crisis has intensified, the board of the social security institution has decided to transfer some properties of the Amendola fund to that ex Hines transformed into an investment company with fixed capital. Inpgi2 would therefore have to purchase a share (51%) of this vehicle and then also to make investments for redevelop real estate assets, making it more attractive for sale. Inpgi 1 would remain 49% of the SICAF. The sore point is the outlay requested from Inpgi2 to buy the majority of the company. A figure that will be defined by a independent appraisal on the properties merged into the SICAF. The problem is the value attributed to the properties: if it should be lower to that of setting up the Amendola fund, would require a devaluation which would cause many problems to the Inpgi1, which is already sailing in bad waters unlike the Inpgi2.

Furthermore, it is not clear why the cashier of professionals and collaborators cannot invest in different activities that are not already owned by the Inpgi1 which, moreover, has also already put them up for sale without success. “Basically, the money of the collaborating journalists would go to “finance” the cash needs of the management of employed journalists – the question resumes – (…) In this way, the proponents of the proposal argue, it would be “With common factor” the resources of the two managements (prestigious properties and liquidity) for the enhancement and maximization of obtainable results. All this, in fact, “through ‘an agreement’ between the two managements”, which is not necessarily well regarded by collaborators and freelancers.

In short, it is one patch that is likely to be worse than the hole. With the use of the positive assets of Inpgi2 to safeguard the battered financial statements of Inpgi1, moreover in a context in which publishers are still demanding new early retirement. Even in spite of the fact that for decades they have enjoyed more favorable treatment than the majority of employees registered with INPS. A great gift, which accumulated over time, has saved Italian publishers something like 900 million euros that did not enter the institution’s coffers.

The heads of the journalists’ fund (the only privatized body among the professional funds that insures employees) have charged contribution rates for pensions of approximately 4 percentage points less than the INPS social security scheme. And this lasted from privatization until 2012 when the first crunches on keeping the accounts were revealed, only then it was decided to align the contribution of publishers to that of the INPS system. Those 4 percentage points in fact give yourself to employers each year they were worth the beauty of about 50 million euros. Calculated on a taxable social security basis of the salaries of employed journalists that has gone from 1.5 billion of the golden years to just over 1 billion post-crisis.

A grave original sin that signals the myopia of those who managed the Inpgi since privatization and which caused the institute to lack fundamental resources. Today those money, if they had been collected, as happened for all employees registered with INPS, they would be useful to postpone the patrimonial crash of the journalists’ pension fund. But in addition to the “gift” of the contribution of favor to the publishers, the same have ended, not infrequently, also by not paying the amount due. In the Inpgi budget there is a amount of uncollected contributions by the employers it exceeds the 270 million euros. A level that has been dragging on unchanged for years. Already in 2011 the amount of contributions evaded or better in suffering was 274 million euros.

As you can see, nothing has happened since. The institution has been dragging on for a decade a mountain of unpaid contributions without doing almost anything. The recovery rates, as the Court of Auditors notes every year, are laughable. A few million a year. And so every year the institution must write down non-performing loans of tens of millions. In the Inpgi budget there is still a bad debt provision of a hundred million. About fifty million are receipts that accrue the following year and another fifty are from companies that have gone bankrupt in the meantime. However, about 170 million in contributory credits lost along the way that today would be useful like gold for the bankruptcy budgets of the institute which has a negative balance on pension management alone of 200 million.

The other great “gift” is the Inpgi, which also suffers the publishing crisis and the massive spill of work-dependent journalists as well as the soaring new pensions made it their own to journalists. For decades, until the last recent reforms that aligned the contribution and return rates to INPS, the rate of return was of 2.66% on each year of work, against the 2% in force at the INPS. It means, if looked at in retrospect, that the retirement of journalists was 30% more profitable compared to public welfare. Richer pensions for decades, so much so that the Inpgi of all the privatized funds boasted the higher ratio between average salary and average pension. Low editor contributions and higher pension returns held as long as the publishing industry pulled. Starting from 2010-2011 when the crisis started to bite, all the knots have come to a head in one fell swoop. The serious crisis in publishing only gave the coup de grace to a precarious balance of accounts, in which the gap between income and expenditure was in fact already unbalanced.

Now, after two reforms made in 2011 and 2017 that have not in fact contained the hole in the accounts, the Inpgi insists on bringing the so-called communicators to its bed, thus widening the contribution base, in short, relies on the umpteenth “reformic “. When fully operational it will allow savings in the income / expense balance of just 20 million. That is only 10% of the pension gap. A solution that however comes is rejected to the sender by the same communicators who should abandon public welfare for the “private” one with all the risks it entails. Especially since the rates of return are now aligned with those of INPS. The only realistic solution would be to admit that the autonomous institute has no longer been sustainable financial and, as has been the case for other privatized entities, re-enter the public sector. Hypothesis against which they hurl themselves vehemently the heads of the institute and the union who shout allattack on freedom of information and the independence of journalists. What the good free press has to do with pension cash flows is difficult to understand.

You may also like

Leave a Comment