The risks are many and the road is narrow, but the Italian economy it could emerge from the energy crisis at the pace of the other major economies in the euro area, after showing even greater resilience in the post-pandemic situation than ever before in the last 25 years. The experts predict it Promethea in the latest forecast report for December.
Prometeia revises its GDP estimates upwards
in 2022 the Italian economy will grow by 3,9%. This is Prometeia's estimate, which raises the previous forecast released in September by half a percentage point (from +3,4%). Estimates for 2023 are also on the rise, the year in which Italy could grow by 0,4% (+0,3% compared to the 0,1% estimated 3 months ago).
the Eurozone growth will be 3,4% in 2022 and 0,1% in 2023. "These performances beyond expectations - explains Prometeia - are possible above all thanks to the budgetary policy measures which have contrasted the recession in recent years, supporting households and businesses. Technical recession avoided during this winter, a substantial year's halt to GDP growth will in any case be the macroeconomic price paid to the gas crisis linked to the conflict in Ukraine”.
Prometeia: inflation down in 2023
The Prometeia scenario is based on three main conditions. The first concerns consumer prices. The association expects that in 2023, inflation will drop to 5,8% from 8,4% in 2022. Even if gas prices fall starting next spring, energy costs however, they will remain structurally higher than in the past and households and businesses will have to adapt their consumption habits to this change, according to the experts.
The second condition concerns the monetary policy of the ECB which must not hasten the restriction. “An essential condition is also that monetary policy does not push too hard to obtain a rapid return of inflation, thus generating a real recession – reads the report -. The recent statements by ECB President Christine Lagarde are not very reassuring in this sense. In this circumstance, our country would risk paying a very high cost, because the cost of servicing the public debt would rise to levels that could further jeopardize growth, requiring corrective measures”.
Finally budgetary policy he must keep to a virtuous path. “Debt will have to return to a path of gradual reduction. The cost of debt has already risen as a result of rapidly rising interest rates, and it will have to confront the markets more openly in the future, given the end of the European Central Bank's debt purchase programs and the progressive divestment of the securities in the portfolio, which will make it necessary to place them with private, domestic and foreign investors.
Judgment on the Budget law
According to Prometeia, the first budget law presented by the new executive is eexpansive only for 2023, for 1,1 percentage points of GDP, with a composition that limits its impact on growth to 0,2 points.
“In the coming years, when presumably the currently suspended rules of the Stability Pact (or a reformed version of them) will come back into force – explain the experts of the Bologna association – the maneuver will be essentially neutral".
“The Italian economy will therefore no longer be able to count on an expansive budget policy, and only the iinterventions financed by the Pnrr they will be able to provide, if correctly employed, a conspicuous support to growth”. The maneuver presented by the government - underline the Prometeia experts - is small in size, 39 billion euros gross in 2023, of which an important part, 23 billion, goes to refinance measures already in force, from contrasting high energy prices to cutting the tax wedge.
