It is necessary to plan a tax cut immediately, giving priority to work and businesses, with the reduction of the tax wedge. The governor said so Ignazio Visco in the final considerations atassembly of the Bank of Italy.
"Tax reductions they are necessary in the medium term and can be planned right now – underlined Visco -. They can only be selective, favoring work and production: the tax wedge on work is holding back employment and business activity".
Today, however, Treasury Minister Fabrizio Saccomanni said in an interview with Il Sole 24 Ore that for now there aren't much margins" for reducing the tax wedge, "coverages must be found and in this case we are talking about significant resources ”: for 2014 “the estimates say that there is space”, but “we need to verify the dynamics of the GDP and the public accounts”.
Precisely on this front, Visco reiterated that the progress made “must be preserved, dispersing it would have serious consequences. It is illusory for us to think of exiting the crisis with the lever of the budget deficit: the margin of confidence that savers and market operators grant us is narrow. For this year, there are no margins for an increase in the deficit: they have been absorbed by the decision to pay the public administrations' capital account trade debts”.
As for Italian banks, were “weakened – said the number one of Via Nazionale – first by tensions on sovereign debt, then by the effects of the recession” and “problematic situations are likely to arise".
A picture that demonstrates how “Europe and Italy are still in a difficult transition. To overcome it, we cannot afford to lose tension: we must insist on the work of reform. You don't need to be afraid of the future, of change, you don't build anything on the defense of income and of your own individual, everyone retreats. We need awareness, solidarity, foresight. Well-designed interventions and stimuli, even if they aim to transform the country over a long period of time, will produce the confidence needed to decide that it is already worth committing, working and investing today".
According to the Governor, the anti-crisis measures taken by the ECB "they helped to support the Italian GDP for at least two and a half percentage points over the two-year period”. But that is not enough, since our country has not been able “to respond to the extraordinary geopolitical, technological and demographic changes of the last 25 years – Visco said again -. The adjustment requested and postponed for so long has a historic significance and requires the decisive contribution of politics”.
However, the number one of Palazzo Koch underlined how much “reform action has lost momentum over the past year, also due to the progressive deterioration of the political climate. In taking it up decisively, as the European Commission also encourages us to do in the recommendations accompanying the proposal to close the procedure for excessive deficits, it is essential to follow a comprehensive approach, which immediately sets the objectives in a medium-term horizon".
Attachments: FINAL CONSIDERATIONS VISCO.pdf
