The Chairman of the Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO), Lilia Cavallari, today notified the Presidents of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate of the endorsement on 24 March 2022 of the trend macroeconomic trend scenario for 2022-2025 presented in the 2022 Economic and Financial Document (EFD). The trend macroeconomic forecasts had been transmitted on 23 March by the Ministry for the Economy and Finance (MEF) after being modified to take account of the issues raised by the PBO concerning an earlier version.
The Board of the PBO decided to endorse the trend forecasts transmitted by the MEF and also assessed by the other institutes that make up the PBO panel of forecasters (CER, Prometeia, Ref-Ricerche and Oxford Economics, in addition to the PBO itself) as they fall within an acceptable range over the forecast horizon, although they lie close to the limit for 2022. However, the forecasts are accompanied by an extraordinary level of uncertainty, mainly attributable to the conflict in Ukraine and the resurgence of the pandemic.
The forecasts were endorsed on the basis of information largely available as of mid-March. Subsequent developments in the international environment have been negative, causing some downside risks noted by the PBO to materialise. Istat’s publication on 4 April 2022 of revisions to the annual national accounts had no impact on the endorsement, as it is based on growth rates for the macroeconomic variables starting from 2022.
