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Italy will not present its new budget plan until next month, missing the European Union's September deadline, because parliament wants the Treasury to factor in upcoming revisions to economic growth data for 1995-2023, a minister said.
National statistics bureau ISTAT this week pre-announced an upward revision of between 0.9 and 1.2% for gross domestic product (GDP) in 2021, and said it would present the full revisions on 23 September.
"We don't know what the impact of the revisions will be, but they could affect the budget plan figures," Luca Ciriani, the minister for relations with parliament, told reporters at the end of a meeting with party leaders.
"The government will present the plan in the first week of October so that lawmakers can have a look at the impact of the data coming from ISTAT," he added.
The Treasury previously said the plan, which includes updated targets for public finances, would be unveiled by the middle of this month, before the EU deadline of 20 September.
Brussels had already informally pushed back that deadline to the end of September, Ciriani said.
The cabinet will however hold a preliminary discussion on the plan's targets and GDP projections on 17 September, before the ISTAT revisions, Economy Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti said in a statement, signalling that the Treasury was on schedule in its forecasting work.
A government official said the ISTAT revisions were not expected to have significant implications for Rome's strained state finances.
Italy was put under a so-called Excessive Deficit Procedure by the EU this year, after its 2023 budget deficit came in at 7.4% of GDP, the highest in the euro zone and far above the European Union's 3% ceiling.
In its budget plan, which aims to cut the fiscal gap in line with EU prescriptions and also comply with the latest reform of the bloc's fiscal rules, the Treasury intends to confirm a commitment to bring the deficit below 3% in 2026, sources said last month.
Brussels's infringement procedure obliges Italy to cut its structural budget deficit -- net of one-off factors and business cycle fluctuations -- by 0.5% or 0.6% of GDP per year.
The new fiscal rules require a slow but steady pace of headline deficit and debt reduction from 2025, over four to seven years, depending on commitments regarding reforms and strategic investments.
