Not only BTp Valore: the key role of households (and companies) in Italia's rating

After the record-breaking syndicated transactions aimed at institutional investors, mainly from abroad, the Treasury is returning with the punctuality of a Swiss watch to focus on Italian households. The BTp Valore announced yesterday that it will end up on the market during the first week of March aims in no uncertain terms at further expanding the share of Italian government bonds in savers' portfolios, which in the last three years has already risen from 6% to 15%, also driven by coupons that are once again attractive.

The role of the private sector - households as well as companies - is crucial for the fate of Italy's public accounts, not only when it comes to finding buyers for a debt that continues to grow despite everything. Indeed, it is also so when it comes to ratings and the hunt that Italia is giving for that 'Serie A' lost more than a decade ago, at the time of the great debt crisis and the BTp-Bund spread that went crazy over 500 basis points.

Excluding Dbrs Morningstar - the only one so far to have restored the Italian rating to 'A(low)' last October - it is S&P Global Ratings the agency theoretically closest to taking the plunge, given that just a week ago it upgraded its outlook on our debt from 'neutral' to 'positive', which remains tastefully one step below 'Bbb+'. The decision in this case is certainly not imminent, since the next windows for a possible upgrade will open in mid-May and then again in November, but it is significant that S&P has repeatedly stressed the importance of households and businesses in the review process.

He did so when it came to justifying the decision he had just taken on the outlook, pointing out that 'despite the persistent uncertainty in international trade, Italy's diversified private sector will continue to support current account surpluses, thus favouring the economy's net creditor position vis-à-vis the rest of the world'. And he reiterated this immediately afterwards when it came to painting the picture of a possible positive scenario: 'We would raise our rating,' the S&P analysts specified, 'if Italia continues to strengthen its external financial position and reduce its budget deficit'.

Without prejudice to the indispensable role of those who have so far managed to avert the derailment of Italy's public finance train and are called upon to 'gradually reduce net debt, bringing the public debt on a gradual downward trajectory by 2028', the private sector's contribution to what could be defined to all intents and purposes as a sort of 'national salvation' is at least as significant. It is no mystery, moreover, that to a public debt that unfortunately has few rivals in terms of amplitude in the world and that at the end of 2025 was most likely still worth almost 140% of the national wealth, Italia can contrast, according to the indications contained in the most recent Global debt monitor published by the International institute of finance, a non-financial sector indebted to the tune of 58% of GDP and households that are even more like 'ants' with a rate of just 36%.