The bill related to the regulation of the project financing is now being discussed in Parliament. Once passed, the regulation will allow also in Italy the use of an instrument successfully exploited in other European countries and that our firms have been missing for a long time.

Eventhough the present lack of regulation, Italian public institutions are already starting off. An example is given by the project of the building of a tunnel in the surroundings of the city of Como that will represent the first public work made through project financing. In the next months, the contract will be awarded to one of the five groups of companies on tender consisting of Italian and mostly foreign first level exponents.

The lack of clear and accurate rules and of previous experiences that could act as a model has made difficult so far to use project financing in Italy: the very high costs to bear in the previous phase to the tender for legal, technical and financing advice in order to evaluate the feasibility of the project have represented a decisive obstacle to the use of such an instrument.