The Italian government’s new incentive plan to boost the purchase of bicycles, electrical bikes and motorbikes will probably start in September and will be less generous than a previous one. On Tuesday, the environment ministry signed the agreement with the trade association ANCMA, representing manufacturers of bicycles and motorbikes, to launch a new incentive package totaling €12 million, of which €7 million is going toward bicycles and e-bikes and the remainder to motorbikes.

The deal still has to be approved by the national audit committee, which has up to 45 days to examine it, which means that it could still be modified. Industry sources feel that even if the agreement obtains the green light before August, when the Italians usually go on holidays in droves and shops are often closed, it is unlikely that the incentive scheme will be activated before business returns to normal in September because the government and ANCMA will want to make sure that the information technology platform managing the scheme is reliable and that the application procedure is streamlined.

The previous incentive scheme, which totaled €8.75 million, was marred by technical problems and shopkeepers
complained about having to spend hours to file applications for the incentives. The system’s server even seized up on May 7 because of the excessive number of retailers connected. The funds ran out around mid-May. According to the site tracking the applications for incentives (www.incentivimotocicli.it.), 40,398 applications were lodged by the time the funds ran out and 99.53 percent of the requests were for bicycles.

For bicycles and e-bikes, the old incentive package offered a contribution worth 30 percent of the price tag of a bicycle up to a maximum of €700. With the new scheme, the aid is still expected to be worth 30 percent of the price but up to a maximum of €200 for bicycles and €450 for e-bikes.