(Tiper Stock Exchange) – The Parliamentary Budget Office has slightly revised upwards the 2023 GDP forecast from +0.9% to +1.0% but cut by 0.3 points those on 2024 from +1.4% to +1.1%. This is what emerges from the note on the economic situation of August which updates the estimates published by the Office on the occasion of the elaboration of the Def. For 2023, the note reads, the revision is linked to the “positive surprise on the first quarter data” which “prevails over the opposite sign on the following period” while the cut in the estimates for 2024 is linked to the “deterioration of foreign demand and of global financial conditions”. According to the PBO, “Italy’s macroeconomic situation remains surrounded by wide-ranging uncertainty and the prevalence of downside risks.
The PBO he also points out that the underlying component of inflation is slowing “but the increases in the ‘shopping cart’ remain in the double-digit range”. “The drop in inflation started in the previous months continues, which has also extended to the core component” notes the PBO “however, the pressure on the prices of foodstuffs and some services related to tourism remain high”. Inflation, continues the Note, “measured through the consumption deflator, is expected to gradually decrease in the two-year period 2023-24”. The decline “would be gradual this year (5.1 per cent, from 7.4 in 2022)” while next year “the consumption deflator would slow down more markedly, to 2.4 per cent, mainly due to the substantial stagnation in raw material prices”
The labor market strengthened in the winter months” with an increase in the first quarter of both hours worked (1.3 per cent) and the number of employed persons (0.4 per cent). Also in the April-June period, the PBO reports, “the employed increased by a similar pace” while hourly contractual wages “increased by 2.7 per cent on a year-on-year basis (half a percentage point more than in the previous three months), supported by the increase in the private sector (to 2.1 per cent); the trend remains sustained (at 4.5 per cent) in the public sector, due to the increases relating to various contract renewals for the three-year period 2019-2021 (signed from May 2022 and paid in the second half of the year)”
The PBO also warns about the fact that the macroeconomic scenario of the Italian economy is “subject to risks, overall oriented downwards” mainly of an international nature but also internal ones “primarily on the evolution of the PNRR”. In particular, the main risks “are of an international nature, with particular reference to the European cycle and the volatility of the commodity markets”. “However – continues the Note – there are also significant factors of uncertainty within our country, first of all on the evolution of the PNRR for which the Government has recently proposed some changes”.