4 billion via in essence the hospitals

Placed in the heart of the élyséenne strategy, public investment focus, Sunday, the attention of all Ministers in government seminar at Matignon. They will have until end of October to define a decade of "strategic priorities" that could justify spending of magnitude in the next few years, financed by a loan whose edges remain to be defined (see below). In the light of the proposals, the risk is that projects emerge from any share, without overall consistency. On Wednesday, François Fillon thus referred, at the same time, "biotechnology, the energy of the future, electric cars, a number of sectors in the field of food, in the field of health, education in General". The entourage of Nicolas Sarkozy is ecology, research, education, training, industrial policy and SME. On behalf of the "human investment", Henri Guaino, the Special Adviser to the head of State, cited in "The world", the contract of professional transition. "CTP, is the inverse of an investment expense." "It is an expense of the past, which allows to fix the consequences of economic dismissal", replies were at Bercy.

Future generations

Compile the list of investment could prove even more difficult that the exercise will involve economic actors (entrepreneurs, researchers, etc.) and conviés in the Elysee Palace next Wednesday, social partners and which will certainly want to enrich it. To frame the exercise, Eric Woerth, Minister of the Budget, hopes to impose a restrictive definition: "investment expenditures are those who bring a net return to future generations." "These are expenses that we should not be ashamed to finance our children", said his entourage, who refuse to integrate all education expenses in this category. "It is not enough that an expense be so-called investment to make it for the future", said the UMP MP Hervé Mariton that "to have the courage to do as in Finland, almost exclusively, on the efforts of research where the expenditures are concentrated,".

However, consensus seems clear on the principle of increasing the share of investment in public expenditure. Last year, government investments amounted to EUR 62.4 billion, against EUR 353,9 billion for operating expenses. The share of investment in public expenditure is therefore very minority: 6, compared with 34.5 to 53.9 for benefits and operating costs. Local communities represent nearly three quarters of the investment (with 45.4 billion euros), the electoral cycle dictating the trends. The State stricto sensu invested that EUR 6.9 billion in 2008, to which must be added 3.7 billion to the title, including universities. The social sector has also invested 6.4 billion, via, in essence, the hospitals.

Infrastructure

These national accounts of the Insee however adopt a restrictive view, being limited mainly to infrastructure investment. Purchases of tanks or trucks, by the Ministry of defence, are even regarded as operating and non-investment expenditures. Just as the "human capital", the hiring of researchers or the budgets of the laboratories. In operating expenses, the remuneration of agents, thus represented, last year, 247,7 billion euros and intermediate consumption 97.4 billion. At this point, it becomes very difficult to isolate the part of salaries of agents that ensure the day-to-day management of the administrations of those who prepare the future. Subsidies from the State in certain sectors are not assimilated to investment. Attached to Bercy, the direction of the budget proposes a slightly broader field: public investment of the State there was encrypted to 12.6 billion euros last year. Most of the "future spending" envisaged by the Executive are therefore not, today, the definition accounting or budgetary, investment.