The Council of Ministers approved the Def, the Economics and finance document which contains forecasts on Italy's economic performance, public finance objectives and the main reforms in the pipeline for the next few years. The government had made an appointment in the late afternoon to take note, first of all, of the slowdown in the recovery. The Minister of Economy, Pier Carlo Padoan, announced at a press conference that the GDP forecast for 2016 has been raised to 1,2%, from the +1,6% estimated in the Def 2015 update last September. For the following years, a +1,4% is now indicated for 2017 (from 1,6%) and a +1,5% for 2018. Italy is back from +0,8% in 2015 and light of that data, Padoan claimed: "There is growth, it is driven by household consumption and investments - both public and private - are showing an acceleration". A series of elements that make him claim "the positive effect of government measures".
As already indicated in the drafts that have entered Palazzo Chigi, changes are also being recorded on the deficit front. For this year, the government seems to have identified a meeting point with the EU Commission by indicating debt at 2,3% of GDP, or somewhere between the 2,2% indicated in the autumn and the 2,4% that would be reached occupying all the space related to the now famous "flexibility clause" for migrants (0,2 points of GDP, about 3 billion). A result that can be achieved thanks to an administrative adjustment: tears and blood are not needed, savings on interest expenses (thanks to the ECB) and the extra revenue linked to the return of capital (voluntary disclosure) are enough to reduce some debt . "We will not make corrective maneuvers, a term that we have scrapped," Prime Minister Matteo Renzi assured at a press conference.
