The inspectors of the International Monetary Fund arrived in Rome last Monday and will deliver their "letter" to the Italian government at the end of the first week of July. This is the usual annual check-up of the economic health of our country. The IMF experts will have to update the estimates on Italian growth. The April outlook called for a 2013% decline in GDP in 1,5, followed by a 0,5% recovery in 2014.
Now the most recent forecasts (from the Confindustria Study Center to Standard & Poor's, via Prometeia) speak of a -1,9% of GDP for this year. A possible cut in the estimates by the Fund, in any case, does not automatically mean that there is a need for a corrective manoeuvre. As the Deputy Secretary General of the OECD, Piercarlo Padoan recalled, “to the extent that this economic weakness is of a cyclical nature, this in theory does not impact on the structural deficit, which is the objective of public finance. So we continue to think that corrective measures are not necessary".
