Members of the populist Italian government on Friday had a "useful and positive" meeting on the 2019 budget, which won't contain a VAT hike, deputy premier and interior minister Matteo Salvini said on Friday.
"It was useful and positive," Salvini, leader of the far-right League party, said after leaving the prime minister's office in Rome.
"There won't be any increase to VAT - this government was elected to cut taxes," Salvini told reporters.
Present at the cabinet meeting were premier Giuseppe Conte, economy minister Giovanni Tria, European affairs minister Paolo Savona and Riccardo Fraccaro, minister for relations with parliament.
Amid market fears Italy's cabinet might sanction a surge in deficit spending, Conte said on Wednesday the government was not getting “hung up over decimal places" in the 2019 budget.
The budget needed to be “courageous” but also had to be "credible....because we are calling on markets to invest (in Italy),” Conte stated.
Tria has sought to reassure investors and the European Union Commission, which must approve Italy's budget, that Rome will stick to fiscal rules requiring the deficit to be no more than 3 percent of gross domestic product - amid from pushback Salvini and Luigi Di Maio - leader the League's coalition partner the grassroots Five-Star Movement.
Di Maio is also deputy premier and welfare and industry minister.
