House gives final approval to 2024 budget law

(ANSA) - ROME, DEC 29 - Italy's Lower House on Friday approved definitively the 2024 budget law with 200 votes in favour, 112 against and 3 abstentions.
    The package is worth around 28 billion euros, if one counts a related tax reform, reducing the number of Irpef income-tax bands from four to three by merging the two lowest ones.
    Roughly half the measures are financed via additional deficit.
    Salient features of the budget, which was approved by the Senate last Friday with a series of change that "have on the whole generated an improvement in all the public finance balances" according to Economy Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti, include the extension by a year of the six-percentage-point reduction in the labour-tax wedge for those earning up to 35,000 euro and of the seven-percentage-point reduction for those earning up to 25,000 euro.
    The government says this is worth an average increase of around 100 euros a month in the pay packets of 14 million workers.
    There are also a number of measures aiming to support families with children as part of a commitment by the government of Premier Giorgia Meloni to mitigate the decline in Italy's birthrate.
    Opposition parties have criticized the package, saying it is "minimalist" and does not stoke economic growth.
    Trade unions have expressed their disappointment by staging a series of strikes.
    Industry association Confindustria said it does little for Italian business.
    Premier Giorgia Meloni's government rejected this, saying investment for business is coming via the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), which seeks to make the Italian economy greener and more modern with projects funded the help of almost 200 billion euros in EU grants and low-interest loans.
    "The budget was prepared in an extremely complicated scenario, in which the uncertainty linked to recent events in the Middle East comes on top of the difficulties that have long characterised the economic and geopolitical situation," Giorgetti told a joint session of the Lower House and Senate budget committees last month.
    "A compromise between the different demands and the internal and external budgetary constraints had to be found within the executive.
    "It was not an easy job, but I think it was done as well as possible," he said. (ANSA).