Maddalena Muccioli (PDCS) spoke during item 21 of the Grand and General Council agenda, concerning the adjustment to the State and public entities’ budget forecast for the 2026 financial year. Her full remarks follow below.
Maddalena Muccioli (PDCS): I will briefly address this adjustment which, as has been pointed out by all political forces, was presented by the government as a technical adjustment. In this regard, I thank both the government and all the political forces present in this chamber for respecting the approach of keeping this measure as technical as possible.
Personally, I believe it is increasingly appropriate to try to structure bills, as was recently done with the family law, where all support measures for family units were concentrated, and to keep budget and adjustment laws as technical and readable as possible, even for anyone with an interest who is not directly involved in the drafting process.
I too am pleased with the improved budget outcome, which shows a significant reduction in the previous deficit. On this point, I want to confirm what other colleagues said before me: there is no intention, no idea within the majority or among any councillor in this chamber, of feeling fully reassured by higher revenue alone.
In my view, the path begun with the budget law of December last year must be maintained and continued in all future budget laws, and confirmed in the technical adjustments as well.
Regarding the management of higher revenues, I agree with those who say they must not be used to increase public spending. We find ourselves at a moment when we are very close to the provisional entry into force of the Association Agreement with the European Union, and so it will become increasingly important to define where the resources deriving from the State budget should be invested.
Before that, there must be a discussion on which areas need to be strengthened, which ones might need to be reviewed and made more efficient, and which ones might be considered outdated or replaceable by others.
This reasoning must also be maintained in the upcoming steps related to the finance laws, because the idea cannot take hold — and I don’t think any councillor in this chamber intends to even suggest it — that higher State budget revenues can be managed by channelling them into increased current expenditure.
From this standpoint, I believe the process begun by the majority and by the political forces in this chamber last December must be maintained and continued in the coming months as well.
There have been observations regarding the estimated value linked to last year’s IGR (general income tax) reform. I want to confirm that the effects — for example, of the additional 1% rate on the general income tax and of the entire revision of deductions and allowances — will only become visible starting with the next tax return, which will be filed in June-July 2027, that is, at the end of the 2026 tax period.
During this financial year, we have already seen effects linked, for example, to documented or undocumented expense reimbursements in employees’ pay slips, or to withholding taxes on income produced by foreign entities within San Marino territory.
As of today, therefore, we still only have a partial measurement of last year’s reform, because many of the measures introduced will only take effect starting next year.
I also wanted to highlight the need for increasingly thorough assessments. Some colleagues before me mentioned, for example, the irredeemable bond, or the management of the monofase (single-phase tax) items themselves. We can see that the monofase is increasingly a difficult budget item to forecast, since the related reimbursement due to economic operators can only be estimated after the fact.
There are also other types of items that indirectly fall within the State budget, such as tax credits, which are increasingly complicated items to manage, also due to the substantial difficulty in predicting their actual impact on the State budget.
I would remind everyone that this is a technical adjustment to last December’s law; however, it will become increasingly important, in future budget laws, to also assess these aspects, which could have a critical effect, whether positive or negative, but which must in any case be fully evaluated.
In the minute I have left, I want to highlight, as other colleagues have already done, our productive economic system, which as always proves to be a driving force for our economy, as also recognised by the International Monetary Fund.
For this reason, I too wish to express my great satisfaction that the economic system operating within the Republic of San Marino truly manages to be an example and a driving force for the entire State economy.
