Italy’s public debt hit postwar record due to Covid-19 impacts

10:07 AM 16/04/2021 | Lượt xem: 4593 | In bài viết | Đọc bài viết send email

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On March 1, Italian National Institute of Statistics (Istat) published data showing that Italia’s public debt at the end of 2020 soared by 20% of GDP compared to that of 2019 due to the impact of Covid-19 disease.

Italy was the first country in Europe to experience a major Covid-19 outbreak and remains one of the hardest hit by the crisis. The whole country was in lockdown from March 9, 2020 until the end of May, 2020, with dramatic consequences.

According to Istat’s publication on March 1, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Italy, the third largest economy in Eurozone contracted by 8.9% due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the government curbs on businesses to try to control it. In order to foster an economic rebound from the recession caused by the Covid-19 crisis, Giuseppe Conte’s government has already adopted four stimulus packages. These efforts of the government led to a sharp rise in budget deficit level, from 1.6% GDP in 2019, the lowest level since 2007, to 9.5% GDP in 2020.

The public debt - proportionally the highest in the euro zone after Greece’s - surged in 2020 to 155.6% of GDP from 134.6% the year before, coming in below the official forecast of 157.0% due to the strong measures adopted by the government with the aim of containing the virus outbreak. At the end of 2020, Italy’s public debt was recorded at 2,570 billion Euro (3,110 billion USD), compared to 2,410 billion Euro at the end of 2019. Italy is hoping to receive 200 billion Euro from Next Generation EU recovery plan of EC to reboot the economy.

Besides, Istat also published data on inflation rate showing a slight increase of 0.1% in February 2021 compared to that of January 2021 and of 0.6% compared to February 2020. Export in 2020 declined by 13.8% and import by 12.6% compared to 2019 data.

	GDP growth rate	Deficit/ GDP	Debt/ GDP	Primary balance/ GDP*	Tax take/ GDP
2020	-8.9 %	9.5 %	155.6 %	-6.0 %	43.1 %
2019	0.3 %	1.6 %	134.6 %	1.8 %	42.4 %
2018	0.9 %	2.2 %	134.4 %	1.5 %	41.7 %