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       ROME: Italy’s parliament on Saturday approved the 2025 budget, aiming to both appease EU demands to lower the eurozone nation’s deficit and honour Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s pledge to cut taxes.

       Over half of the package, worth some 30 billion euros ($31 billion), is devoted to cuts to tax and social security contributions for low- and middle-income earners.

       Rome is having to perform a fine fiscal balancing act, after Brussels took Italy to task earlier this year over its debt worth nearly 3 trillion euros, the second highest as a proportion of gross domestic product (GDP) in the European Union.

       Published in Dawn, December 29th, 2024