The budget and funding from the banks. Tajani: ‘Contributions from the entire financial sector’
The Deputy Prime Minister explains that the 5 billion euros included under the heading ‘resources’ for the forthcoming Budget Bill within the Draft Budget Bill (DPB) refer to ‘the entire financial sector’
Key points
The 5 billion euros included under the ‘resources’ heading for the forthcoming budget law within the Draft Budget Bill (DPB) relate to the entire financial sector, ‘including Cassa Depositi e Prestiti’. This was stated by Deputy Prime Minister Antonio Tajani, speaking on the sidelines of the ‘Welfare, Italia’ Forum on the funding of the budget bill. A hot topic, which was at the centre of the summit held at Palazzo Chigi on Monday evening.
Tajani did not comment on the allocation of the 5 billion. However, he made it clear that ‘it will not only concern banks and insurance companies’, but also CDP ‘and other organisations’. He emphasised that the aim of the contribution would not be ‘punitive, and would not target so-called windfall profits’.
Beware of cooperative credit banks and community banks
Tajani pointed out that it will therefore be necessary to consider ‘a different kind of measure’ from the taxation of profits, ‘taking particular account of the specific nature of local banks, cooperative credit banks and people’s banks, which must be protected because they are the ones that provide loans to small business owners and households’.
“We must be careful,” he explained, “to ensure that the measures do not have a severe impact on and cause problems for cooperative credit banks and other local banks,” he concluded.
Messina (Intesa): ‘There was a three-year agreement. We’re paying 25 billion in tax’
A few hours later, at the International Forum on Agriculture and Food, Carlo Messina, Chief Executive of Intesa Sanpaolo, spoke on the subject, recalling that ‘last year we reached an agreement on a three-year contribution, which was the amount the banks would be required to pay over the next three years. I believed in it. We had proposed making it an annual contribution, but we were told to make it a three-year commitment because this would provide stability for the public finances and also for the banks’.
