thus the home bonuses have pushed the GDP-Corriere.it

The national statistical institute should always be seated at the head of the table in any debate on Italian politics. No decision can ignore reality, represented in an analytical, measurable and neutral way. This is the work that Istat has carried out even today, after a long discussion with the European statistical agency Eurostat, regarding the budgetary implications of the superbonus and the other home bonuses linked to tax credits that had been made usable almost that they were current currency: you could pay a company and the latter could transfer them to the bank, as if they were so many checks, in exchange for cash.

Istat data make the Superbonus costs transparent

Today’s Istat communication, inspired by a review of Eurostat’s accounting criteria, has the merit of making this mechanism, launched in the midst of the pandemic and since then never stopped until the government decree of 16 February, transparent at all costs. The deficit for 2020 has been revised upwards only slightly from 9.5% of gross product (GDP) to 9.7%, with an increase in the “primary” deficit of the public administration (before paying interest on the debt) from 6 % to 6.2% of GDP. But above all in the following years the impact of the revision for the worse of the public finance balances is significant. The 2021 deficit rises from 7.2% to 9%, with a “primary” deficit also increasing from 3.7% to 5.5%. The effect on 2022 is even stronger: compared to the estimates of the latest update note of the outgoing government of Mario Draghi and the incoming one of Giorgia Meloni, last year’s deficit corrected upwards from 5.6% to 9%. with the primary deficit soaring from an estimated 1.5% to 3.7%.

The effect on the construction sector

It is inevitable that this in-depth overhaul, due to be due, also sheds a different light on the growth results, however flattering they may be. Last year the product grew by 3.7% in real terms, but supported by a very strong budget expansion made entirely in deficit: driven by the effect of the very expensive real estate tax credits, the construction sector grew by 10.2 % last year after posting similar growth the year before. rather probable that the house bonuses have kept the data on growth overall on a trajectory of more than 1% of GDP, the highest in the last two years.

Now the margins of error are smaller

Now the world is challenged after this huge fiscal stimulus. The same minister Giancarlo Giorgetti said in an interview with “Corriere” over a year ago that an entire sector of the Italian economy had been “drugged”. Severely reducing the doses is equivalent to a budgetary restriction, which can only be felt in part on the growth data. Other sectors of the Italian economy, starting from the export industry, are demonstrating a higher than expected dynamism. But if ever there was a honeymoon for Giorgia Meloni’s government, on the most delicate issues of the economy, today’s Istat announcement certainly brings it to an end. Not only for the government but for Italy – social forces, businesses, workers included – as of today the margins of error have certainly narrowed a bit.