It’s wise to think beyond the current economic challenges within the region. The realities of the Global Networked Economy means that the leaders who choose to apply strategic foresight today will be better prepared for the upside opportunities once the European economy recovers.

Every predictable economic cycle tends to conclude with the apparent benefactors being confident they’re ready for the eventual market acceleration — while the laggards are wondering how they totally missed the opportunity for economic advancement, yet again.

As always with these announcements, it’s hard to understand what’s already in place, what’s new, etc.

Basically, a third of that $27bn is not “new money”, it’s money that private players (mostly Orange) have already commited to spending over the next ten years.

Of the remaining 2/3, there’s already a fund of about $1.2bn to be allocated for projects. How the national government will finance that fund gowing forward to get to the $9bn they are commiting to is a questionmark at this stage; it could be some tax mechanism on the industry, it could be some spectrum subsidies, it could… also never happen (which was what the previous government chose to do in the end…)

The local government’s $9bn is the haziest one. Again some of that ù9bn are already commited in projects, maybe $1/2bn or a little more. Where is the rest coming from ? Probably from building less roundabouts and stadiums.