• Def: President Conte convenes government summit at Palazzo Chigi
  • Maneuver. Conte: "Down tax burden and serious fight to evasion". To the unions: "We rowing together"
  • Gualtieri: "In the EU I said no to a restrictive maneuver"

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25 September 2019The Update Note to the Def will arrive at the Council of Ministers on Monday 30 September. Government sources report at the end of the summit at Palazzo Chigi. The deadline of September 27 is not peremptory and it was decided to take a few more days to fine-tune the macro-economic framework of the Maneuver. The deadline, however, enjoys great attention from the European Commission, given that last year it rejected the yellow-government forecast that wanted to bring the deficit to 2.4%. The confrontation between Rome and Brussels brought the forecast down to 2.04%. The roof was respected and the infringement procedure against Italy was averted.

The news
In a hearing in the Chamber for the examination of the budget settlement bill, the Deputy Economy Minister Antonio Misiani confirmed that the 2019 deficit should reach 2%. As for 2020, it announced a package of anti-evasion measures to find the resources in movement, including the introduction of "incentives for the use of electronic cards".

Work in progress
On a technical level, Via XX Settembre is continuing work on the revision of expenditure and on the hypothesis of tax relief. They will go ahead until the budget maneuver is defined, expected in the Council of Ministers on October 15th. The margins for maneuver are very tight. The flag measures of the last governments do not touch. It means keeping Renzi's 80 euros together with Quota 100 and the income of citizenship wanted by Salvini and Di Maio last year. Now the government wants to add the tax wedge cut to employees. We need to find at least 17 billion to add to the twenty-three essentials to block VAT.

The data
In the best case scenario, Italian GDP should not exceed 0.5% next year, with a downward revision compared to the April def (programmatic growth of 0.7%) and in line with international institutions. 2019 is expected to close with flat growth, while Istat has reduced its 2018 GDP from the previous + 0.9% to 0.8%. Estimates that the MEF technicians are transposing into the Note. As for the deficit, it could remain around 2%, provided that some derogations linked to EU flexibility are obtained. The uncertainty of public debt remains, after the upward revision by the Bank of Italy of the 2018 stock to 134.8 percent of GDP from the 132.2% previously estimated. Of course the estimates indicated by the previous government in April of a decline from 132.6% in 2019 to 131.3% in 2020 will be disregarded, both due to the revision of the 2018 data by Via Nazionale and because the estimate included a privatization plan from 18 billion so ambitious as to be rejected.

Fight against evasion
In order to find the resources in maneuver a strengthening of the fight against evasion is expected. Among the proposals, in addition to the incentive of payments by credit card, there could be space for the strengthening of the receipt lottery. It was introduced with the maneuver for 2017 and will be implemented from 1 January 2020. Among the other anti-evasion instruments on which we reason at this time there is also the inclusion of some taxes in the electricity bill, as is the case with the Rai fee. Solution already ventilated by the past yellow-green government.