About RPA

The Regional Public Accounts (RPA) database is aimed to measure financial flows at the regional level. The RPA database provides information on central and local government revenues and expenditures (either on current and capital account).

The database – providing data since 1996 - is referred to the Public Sector and allows for analysis of various sub-aggregates covering different macro-areas and administrative regions, sector classifications, economic categories, definitions of government expenditure and final expenditure recipients.

The Public Sector comprises, in addition to General Government, a non-general-government sector consisting of central and local entities that operate in the public services segment and are subject to direct or indirect control over their management by public entities and/or receive financing from such entities. In the RPA database, each entity is represented as a final expenditure unit by eliminating flows between entities in the same level of government.

The RPA database provides annual data with a lag of about 12-18 months.

The main objectives of the RPA project are:

• identification of the financial flows involving all central and local governments
• reconstruction of territorial financial balances, in order to measuring and analysing the allocation of public expenditure between Italian regions and to verifying the compliance with the principle of additionality of European Structural Funds.
• analysis of the composition of public capital expenditure between investment and transfers

The Regional Public Accounts project is organized as a Network and it is managed by a Central Unit based at the Public Investment Evaluation Unit of the Department for Development and Economic Cohesion supported by 21 operational units located in each region.

Since 2002 a Performance reserve mechanism devoted to the RPA Network has been introduced with the general aim of meeting high quality standards in data collection and implementing the Project. The Regional Public Accounts is part of the Italian National Statistical System (SISTAN), the network of public and private entities that provide official statistical information.

The Regional Public Accounts Project participates and promotes initiatives and cooperation with public and private institutions, as the Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT), the State General Accounting Department (RGS), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and others central and local institutions.