It's not a podium, but almost. Italy ranks fourth among 26 OECD countries in terms of the extent of the corrections necessary to public finances to bring the debt-GDP ratio back to a level considered sustainable between now and 2050. A special ranking that the Parisian organization has decided to draft at a time when governments around the world are grappling with cost cuts.
The global crisis has pushed the debt-to-GDP ratio of the OECD area above 100 per centoe “new research indicates that bringing it back to prudential levels will require consolidation measures of more than 3 percentage points of GDP in many countries”.
Italy is a positive exception. According to the OECD, corrections of just over 2 points of GDP are needed for Italy in the peninsula, the fourth lowest value after the Czech Republic, Denmark and Sweden, first and where no correction is necessary.
Conversely, the country where the major correction is requiredand, equal to 12 percentage points of GDP it is Japan, followed by New Zealand and the United States.
Goal for everyone: to reduce public spending. As for how to proceed "given the current high level of tax burdens in many countries, which negatively affect the performance of the economy, and future spending pressures due to population ageing, a large part of the consolidation should focus on public – says the OECD – intervening on the factors that will tend to make it rise in the future”.
