(Finance) – Almost ¼ of the annual expenditure of Italian familiesprecisely 23% goes into bills, and the impact of obligatory expenditure on family budgets is growing, with deleterious effects on consumption in other sectors. This was stated by the consumer association Non-Profit Consumerism, which loudly asks the government to speed up the approval process of those bills presented to help citizens save on spending on “utilities”.
All the latest reports on Italian consumption attest to how family spendingdespite the growth in purchasing power and disposable incomes and the stability of retail prices, is practically at a standstill – explains Consumerismo – This is because family budgets are besieged by so-called mandatory expenses, the weight of which is increasing, narrowing the space for discretionary consumption.
Among the obligatory expenses are those that in the last year the “utilities” have had the greatest impact on families’ pocketssuch as electricity, gas, water, waste, telephone bills, etc., items that they absorb 23% of family consumption expenditureequal to an equivalent value of almost 287 billion euros per year. A portion so large as to push Italians to reduce consumption in other non-primary sectors, such as catering, clothing, footwear and travel.
“The failure to recover consumption in Italy is a damage to the entire economic system and produces cascading effects on trade, industry and employment – explains the president Louis Gabriele – The growth in spending on utilities despite the end of the energy emergency and the reduction in tariffs is aggravated by lack of consumer knowledge about the savings opportunities offered by the market: this is why we ask the government to speed up the legislative proposals, such as the one presented by Letizia Giorgianni and shared by consumer associations and sector operatorsaimed at establishing the figure of the Utility Manager in Italy to guide families in choosing service providers (electricity, gas, telecommunications, etc.) and guarantee spending savings on bills, in order to increase the resources that Italians can allocate to other non-mandatory consumption”, concludes Gabriele.
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