Members of Italy's lower house of parliament's budget committee were on Thursday set to question finance minister Giovanni Tria on the budget bill due to be put to confidence vote on Saturday, the parliament said in a statement.
During the session due to be aired on the parliament's web TV channel at 20.30 local time, the committee will quiz Tria over the 2019 budget bill and the government's budget plans for 2020 and 2021, according to the statement.
The 2019 budget bill reached the budget committee on Thursday and is due to be approved by MPs in a vote on Saturday. The budget bill was approved by the Senate upper house of parliament on Monday in a confidence motion as the government races to get the bill voted into law by a year-end deadline.
A tussle with the European Union over the government's big-spending plans has been blamed by Rome as one of the causes of the delay in getting the final version of the budget bill ready for lawmakers to vote on.
To stave off EU financial sanctions for breaching the bloc's fiscal rules over its budget, the government in mid-December trimmed its 2019 deficit target to 2.04 percent from 2.4 percent, and lowered its GDP growth forecast from 1.5 percent to 1.0 percent.
The value of Italy's concessions to the European Commission was understood to be just over 10 billion euros.
.jpg)
.jpg)
