The new debts made to finance the budget maneuver will cost Italy €6.1 billion in interest over the next ten years. And so the total amount will reach €100 billion a year, which is more than is spent on education and almost equal to social spending, recalled Francesco Profumo, President of Acri, the association that brings together foundations of banking origin. The issue of high interest rates is well understood by the Minister of the Economy (Mef), Giancarlo Giorgetti, who on several occasions has had occasion to mention how this takes away resources for other interventions. On balance, the restrictive monetary policy undertaken by the ECB has burdened €14-15 billion, allocated to the cost of debt and taken away from other measures. These are the numbers that both the owner of the Mef and the Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, continuously rattle off to explain to the political forces supporting the government that money is scarce, has been allocated mainly to cutting the tax wedge and reducing the Irpef rates, and that therefore the maneuver will have to pass unscathed the discussion in Parliament, without amendments. Next year, an amount that is expected to be around €97 billion will be allocated to interest payments, and then it will skyrocket to nearly €109 billion in the following year and exceed €112 billion in 2026. In 2023, interest will account for 11.2 percent of spending, compared with 18 percent in the area of health and education, and 25.5 percent allocated to welfare and support policies.
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