The Italian monarchy was abolished in 1946, and the country has been a democratic republic ever since with its own constitution, Parliamentary Republic-style government and Executive, Judiciary, and Legislative divisions. In 2017 the IMF urged Italy to maintain it focus on public sector reform to encourage stronger economic growth.
Modernising the country's public administration remains a priority, with many key initiatives still waiting in the wings. At the same time Italy's public sector is notorious for its sheer size and astonishing levels of bureaucracy, all of which stifles efficiency. It can make doing business difficult and expensive, and literally thousands of government-linked firms still dominate local markets.
When the World Bank revealed its regular Doing Business indicators for 2016, it revealed Italy's public sector taking an average of 1,120 days to enforce disputed commercial contracts, 227 days to hand out construction permits, and 124 days to connect businesses to electricity supplies. And while the average tendering process takes under 75 days in the rest of the EU on average, in Italy it still takes an average of 210 days.
MoreHaving said all that, if you can win a contract with an Italian public company, there's a great deal of business to be done and it can be seriously lucrative. The sheer potential is illustrated by our list of the top 20 government companies in Italy. Top of the list comes Anpal Servizi S.P.A, a huge organisation that generated a revenue of 66,850,136.00 Euros in 2017. Consiglio Di Bacino Priula made an impressive 3,618,250.00 Euros during the same period and, further down the list, Ufficio D Ambito Della Provincia Di Cremona generated more than 1,275,421.00 Euros last year.
