2024 budget law 'big test bed' for the government - Bonomi

(ANSA) - ROME, SEP 28 - Confindustria President Carlo Bonomi said on Thursday the 2024 budget will be a "test bed" for the government, the day after it approved the NADEF update to the DEF economic and financial blueprint that provides the macroeconomic framework for the law.
    "The big test bed will come with the next budget law, the one that is coming now," Confindustria president Carlo Bonomi said in an interview to the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Faz) in response to a question on his level of satisfaction with the government's economic policies.
    "The draft texts are not yet available, and so I prefer to wait until I can assess them in order to give judgements," Bonomi added.
    The Industrial chief also said the government had "acted correctly" in reducing the subsidies available to people carrying out green home improvements under the 'Superbonus' scheme "because it was very expensive for the state".
    On the interest-rate hikes enacted by the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Federal Reserve in order to combat rampant inflation, Bonomi said they had been a "huge mistake" "We come from a decade of negative rates" and this "was an anomaly", he told the FAZ.
    "But the sustained pace of rate hikes has been due to a huge mistake by the Fed and the ECB, which considered inflation to be an entirely temporary phenomenon," continued Bonomi, adding that now "a balanced approach" is needed.
    On Italian industry, the Confindustria president said the sector "is unfairly underestimated".
    "We suffered three major crises in 2008, 2010 and 2011. We took some serious hammering. But the lashing has been put to good use," continued Bonomi, saying that "tens of thousands of Italian companies have strengthened their assets, entered global value and supply chains, invested in research and development, built new distribution chains in foreign markets".
    "We have diversified our exports, we are much less exposed to China than Germany. We may not have great international champions like France or Germany, but if you look across all export sectors, medium-sized Italian companies are always in the top rankings in their respective sectors of global trade," he concluded. (ANSA).