Tria’s view is that the gap could rise to at least 1.5 percent of gross domestic product next year, newspaper La Stampa said, without saying where it got the information. That is higher than the 1.2 percent he previously predicted. Newspaper Il Messaggero said he could see a deficit up to 1.8 percent.
The latest reports highlight the struggle between Tria, a cautious academic, on the one side and the coalition partners Five Star Movement and League on the other.
Messaggero said the two parties are pushing for a 2019 deficit somewhere between 2 percent and 2.5 percent. A second top-level budget meeting is scheduled for today, where Messaggero says Tria has been asked to provide more information and solutions.
The figures reported in newspapers are still well below the 3 percent European Union limit, though markets have become increasingly worried about the constant uncertainty in Rome. Italy’s leaders have been whipsawing markets and the EU with contradictory statements all summer, pushing bond yields to a five-year high last week.
Barclays economists’ main scenario is for a deficit of 1.9 percent this year and 1.7 percent in 2018, according to a report late last month. While that would signal the government won’t allow a deterioration in the public finances of the size some had feared, slower consolidation “will set Italy’s debt equilibrium on an increasingly unstable path in the medium term,” it said in a research note.
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