Italy starts paying 600-euro coronavirus benefit

At least 1.8 million self-employed people in Italy received their first monthly state benefit on Wednesday as part of a larger government package to financially support workers during the coronavirus emergency, the Labor Ministry said.

Each affected person receives a tax-exempt voucher of 600 euros (654 U.S. dollars). The 1.8 million self-employed people represent about 50 percent of all those who have applied and qualified for the benefit.

The other 50 percent will receive the benefit “by the end of this week,” Minister of Labor and Social Policies Nunzia Catalfo said in a statement on Tuesday.

Some 22 percent of these first 1.8 million recipients work in the agricultural sector, according to the statement.

The benefit is also planned to be granted for the month of May, and its increase to 800 euros is “plausible,” Italian Economy Minister Roberto Gualtieri told local media Tuesday evening.

Also on Wednesday, before the parliamentary finance committee, the Bank of Italy unveiled an official report analysing the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic and the economy’s liquidity needs.

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“Based on our assessment, Italy’s industrial production would have contracted by around 15 percent in March,” the report stated.

The paper said that confidence among firms and purchasing managers “sharply fell in the manufacturing sector, and also dropped to an all-time low in services and construction.”

“A similar decline is registered in household confidence indicators, and in particular on personal economic prospects, on the country’s economic prospects, and on employment effects (expected),” it specified.