Current Italian Economic News 

    Currently there is a major honeybee shortage throughout Europe, which decreasing and threatening the crop population throughout Europe. In Italy the population of honeybees needed to pollinate crops are between 10 to 25 percent less than it is needed. This has increased the need for biofuels throughout all Europe in 2005. The demand of biofuels has increased because they can act as a substitute for the honeybees to pollinate the crops. Thus the honeybee shortage will shift the demand for biofuels to the right, and thus price increases as well. One solution for this problem would be to introduce either more honeybees to Italy or different types of bees so that the crops could still be naturally pollinated.

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-25656283

               Italy is currently working on a document that will set new targets for the slumping economy and public finances. The Italian cabinet will approve this document, called the Financial and Economic Document (DEF), so that it can be presented to the European Commission. This document will make some immediate changes and give some indicators how Italy will proceed from the Global Crisis. Hopefully this will help turn Italy’s economy around, which has suffered greatly from the Global Crisis.

             Prime Minister, Matteo Renzi, recently said this Financial and Economic Document (DEF) will cut the economic growth forecast to about 0.8 percent from the previously projected 1.1 percent projection, made by the previous Prime Minister. This document will also revise the target budget deficit to be about 2.6 percent of the GDP. It will also indicate how the government will manage to fund 10 billion euros of income tax cuts. This should lower the government revenues by 7 billion euros this year alone. The DEF is also set to raise the target deficit target to 1.8 percent of GDP. The newly elected Matteo Renzi is already hoping to make a huge turnaround for the economy, and he hopes to cut public spending over the next three years. This goal will helped due to the recent fall in yields on Italian government bonds. This fall led to a reduction in debt-servicing costs. Renzi has said he will raise taxation of financial instruments, but most of the tax cut funding must be through cuts in public spending.

            The DEF will raise the target for revenue form privatizations to be closer to 1 percent of the GDP per year. The DEF could also raise the public debt to a new all-time high above 133 percent of the GDP. This is the second highest, next to Greece, and could continue to rise, unless Renzi continues to make changes. 

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/07/us-italy-economy-idUSBREA361BK20140407