By Marcello Condemi
It is time for the Nadef, the Update Note with which the forecasts and strategies contained in the Def (Documento di Economia e Finanza, to be submitted to Parliament by 10 April each year) are adjusted every year, by 27 September, due to the changed macroeconomic and public finance circumstances that have occurred in the meantime.
The document has now become a political battleground rather than an opportunity for technical discussion. With it, however, everything possible has been done.
Minister Giorgetti, transparently, points out in the introduction how the «economic and public finance situation (Appears) more delicate than foreshadowed in spring».»,having undergone, in the second quarter of 2023, «a temporary turnaround»Hence, correctly, the revision of GDP growth estimates for the years 2023 (from 1% to 0.8%) and 2024 (from 1.5% to 1%), and also the identification of a number of corrective measures aimed at bringing the deficit-to-GDP ratio below 140% (139.6%) by 2026: such as the divestment in the three-year period 2024-2026 of certain public shareholdings, with an expected revenue of 1% of GDP, and the gradual reduction in the two-year period 2024-2025 of support measures for the high energy price.
The Minister, then, in order to restore structural oxygen to the deficit/GDP ratio, planned to intervene, starting in 2024, with measures aimed at relaunching the economy, such as the first stages of the so-called tax reform, the cutting of the tax wedge, contractual renewals (especially in the health sector) and the strengthening of public investments, with particular attention to those envisaged in the PNRR.
A topic to be taken into greater consideration, however, yielding large sums of money pro future to structural and significant budgetary interventions, is the strengthening of measures to combat tax evasion.
Published in the newspaper “Il Tempo” on 3 October 2023
