Today, the Chairman of the Parliamentary Budget Office, Giuseppe Pisauro, appeared before the Budget Committee of the Chamber of Deputies as part of the examination of the Second Update of the 2014 Economic and Financial Document. Called to appear at short notice, Pisauro discussed the analysis that the PBO is conducting of the macroeconomic policy forecasts (which are unchanged on those published in the Update) in the light of the revision of targets following the comments of the European Commission. Pisauro compared the validation exercise conducted previously for the macroeconomic policy scenario published in the Update with the exercise carried out for the new version of the budget measures. As shown in the chart, the PBO found that the Government’s policy forecasts still fall within the acceptable forecast range.
The findings of the exercise reflect both the negative impact on GDP of the smaller scale of the budget measures (which have declined from about €11.5 billion to about €7 billion) and the impact of the opposite sign of the inclusion of the measure providing for the payment of severance benefits in advance directly in paychecks.
The hearing did not examine individual provisions of the Stability Bill, which will be addressed in an upcoming hearing.
The verbatim report of the hearing will be published on the PBO’s website as soon as it is made available by the Chamber of Deputies.
