Italy: Monti denies govt is planning wealth tax or further austerity

Rome, 20 July (AKI) - The government has "no plan or need" to approve more austerity measures or a wealth tax to mend Italy's public finances, premier Mario Monti said on Friday

"We have no intention of implementing new austerity cuts," Monti told journalists after a cabinet meeting in Rome.

"We are on track to fulfill our budget goals and thus there is no need for new measures".

Monti, also denied a report in the conservative Il Giornale daily that the government was eyeing a wealth tax on richer Italians earning over 250,000 euros a year.

"A wealth tax is not part of the government's agenda," he said.

Monti's emergency government of technocrats has implemented 30 billion euros of austerity measures and is trying to push through a hotly contested 26-billion-euro package of public-spending cuts and sell-offs to reign in Italy's massive debt load of over 1.9 trillion euros or 120 percent of national economic output (GDP).

Monti's cabinet was appointed in November amid an out-of-control debt crisis that raised the possibility that Italy could default, threatening the future of the single european currency.