Italy turns on its statistics bureau after missed deficit goal

By Anna Uras

ROME, Sept 24 (Reuters) - Italy's government is taking aim at statistics bureau ISTAT after it reported this week that Rome had missed its key 2025 public finance target, leaving it mired in a European Union disciplinary procedure for its "excessive" budget deficit.

ISTAT confirmed on Tuesday the deficit came in last year at 3.1% of gross domestic product, just above the EU's 3% limit, despite repeated government predictions of a downward revision to the data, which was first reported by ISTAT in March.

Economy Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti told parliament he took note of ISTAT's figures "not without regret," and said its way of compiling data was "not always compatible with the needs of public accounts."

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, gearing up for a national election next year, went further, suggesting that ISTAT had got its sums wrong and was working against the country.

"I don't know whether ISTAT is underestimating Italians or the government's performance, and that disappoints me," she said after the data was released.

She added that ISTAT revised up Italy's GDP figures "every year," implying the reported deficit ratio may be unreliable.

ISTAT declined to comment on Meloni's remarks.

A source at the bureau said it "compiles and communicates data without any political considerations, with complete transparency and respecting the methodologies agreed with the European Statistical System and its code of quality."

Linda Laura Sabbadini, a former ISTAT director, said Meloni was deflecting attention from her government's failings and it was untrue that ISTAT always revised up its GDP figures.

"I understand that we're in the middle of an election campaign, but you can't make ISTAT the scapegoat when you haven't monitored spending properly," she told Reuters.

ISTAT is an "independent institution which should not be subjected to political pressure, much less denigrated in public", she added.

The education workers' arm of Italy's largest union, the CGIL, also sprang to the ISTAT's defence.

"Public statistics serve society, not governments," it posted in a statement on social media.

(Reporting by Anna Uras, editing by Gavin Jones)