Meloni Faces Worsening Italian Budget Deficit for This Year
- Shortfall may widen further with ‘superbonus’ one-off impact
- 2024 deficit may also be worse than projected, around 4%
Giorgia Meloni
Photographer: Alessia Pierdomenico/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
Giorgia Meloni’s government is confronting drastically worsening budget figures, adding pressure to her options on how to bolster finances.
A much larger 2023 shortfall close to 5% of output — as measured on an underlying basis without one-off factors from accounting revisions — is inevitable given weakened economic growth and electoral promises including tax cuts, according to people familiar with the matter, who declined to be identified because the numbers are still being discussed. The prior target was 4.5%.