Italy's economic growth in 2007 will be slightly lower than expected, Italian Economy Minister Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa said Tuesday.
The government's previous forecast for GDP growth this year was 2 percent and 1.9 percent in 2008.
During his speech to parliament, Padoa-Schioppa said that the economic growth "might not reach 2 percent" in 2007 and that next year it would probably be somewhere between the 1.6 percent predicted by the International Monetary Fund and the 1.3 percent penciled in by Italian industrialists' association Confindustria.
The minister also gave forecasts for public debt, saying that it would fall to 103.5 percent of GDP in 2008 and sink under 100 percent in 2010. Total debt currently stands at 105.1 percent.
The budget deficit should fall to 2.5 percent of GDP this year and 2.2 percent in 2008, Padoa-Schioppa said. The deficit would be zero by 2011, he added.
The minister promised that the budget for 2008 would be about a third of the size of the last one, coming out at between 9 and 12 billion euros (12.6 and 16.8 billion U.S. dollars). He said it would include a reduction in taxes on housing.
Source: Xinhua
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