SBP's focus on pensions-healthcare says Giorgetti

(ANSA) - ROME, SEP 28 - The mid-term 2025-2029 Structural Budget Plan "leaves nobody behind" and focuses on the "sustainability of the pension system and the quality of healthcare", Economy Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti wrote in the introduction of the document which was delivered to the Lower House and Senate, according to EU regulations approved by the European Parliament and the Council in April this year, Palazzo Chigi has said.
    "The greatest challenge for the country is represented by the elevated stock of public debt and by the relative burden of interests" which "have unsettled any margin to draw public policies to support growth over the last decades", Giorgetti also wrote. "The spaces, although limited, for public investments granted by the Plan starting in 2027 and a prudent and credible budget policy are two crucial elements to attack the weight of debt and expenditure on interests, easing it in a structural manner", wrote Giorgetti, adding that the "fiscal policy path which the Plan proposes is realistic, credible and cautious". The full implementation of commitments taken with the post-Covid National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP) and then a series of reforms that will focus on a number of issues, including taxation and the judiciary, with upcoming new measures including to reduce the duration of trials and the processing of old cases by courts were key indications outlined in the introduction of the SBP signed by Giorgetti.
    It also listed a reform of the public administration to improve services, digitalization, competition and the entrepreneurial world in the new 2024 Competition law.
    It also spoke about "measures to improve the programming and control of public spending and to make State, regional and local spending centres more responsible with the progression of the so-called 'differentiated autonomy'".
    Giorgetti also noted that the situation of the economy, employment and public finances in Italy "is improving despite a fall in the industry's production levels, the concerning widening of international conflicts and technological and environmental challenges of growing complexity".
    On Friday, Giorgetti said that Italian public accounts are now under control despite the heavy inheritance of building bonuses such as the Green home improvement Superbonus which cost billions of euros for the State.
    "The government is working to present the budget law, which will not deviate from the cornerstones that have inspired the government's economic budget policy in these two years," he said.
    "Public finances are under control again and after having inherited the disastrous situation due to the impact of building bonuses, choices based on responsibility and realism have brought results and already in 2024, ahead of our forecasts, we should be able to return to primary surplus, that is, the State will save more money than it spends net of the cost of public debt", Giorgetti noted. (ANSA).