Payments on mortgages will be suspended across the whole of Italy after the coronavirus outbreak, the country’s deputy economy minister said today.
‘Yes, that will be the case, for individuals and households,’ Laura Castelli said in an interview with Radio Anch’io, when asked about the possibility.
Italy’s banking lobby ABI has said that lenders representing 90 per cent of total banking assets would offer debt moratoriums to small firms and households grappling with the economic fallout.
The news comes as Italy announced that it had doubled the amount it plans to spend on tackling its coronavirus outbreak to £6.5billion and is raising this year’s deficit goal to 2.5 per cent of national output from the current 2.2 per cent target.
Speaking to La Repubblica, prime minister Conte yesterday vowed a course of ‘massive shock therapy’ to aid the Italian economy after much of its industrial and business heartland was shut down.
The Milan stock market, which was already down some 17 per cent since the outbreak in northern Italy, plunged at Monday’s opening, with the blue chip FTMIB index down 11 per cent.
Matching similar calls from France, Conte said strict European Union borrowing limits should be loosened to allow more room for manoeuvre, and that the flexibility envisaged by the EU’s budget rules should be used ‘in full’.
‘Europe cannot think of confronting an extraordinary situation with ordinary measures,’ he said.
The European Commission told Italy on Saturday that its planned extra spending in response to the outbreak would not be counted in measuring its compliance with EU budget rules.
‘The economic measures in the works will be vigorous, commensurate to current needs, but temporary,’ the economy ministry said, adding that Italy remained committed to reducing its debt as soon as possible.