Berlusconi to accelerate austerity plan as Italian crisis escalates

PRIME Minister Silvio Berlusconi agreed yesterday to accelerate plans to restore Italy’s public finances after a day of hectic telephoning with international partners alarmed at the escalating crisis over Italian debt.

Speaking at a hastily called news conference after markets closed, Berlusconi promised to bring forward austerity measures passed last month and get the budget into balance by 2013, a year ahead of the original schedule.

“We consider it appropriate to introduce an acceleration of the measures which we introduced recently in the fiscal planning law to give us the possibility of reaching our objective of balancing the budget early, by 2013 instead of 2014,” he said.