ROME (Reuters) – Italy is set to appoint Daria Perrotta as the head of the state auditors at the economy ministry, officials said, the latest move by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government on key positions within Italy’s top state bureaucracy.
Perrotta, 47, currently head of the legislative bureau at the economy ministry and a close aide of Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti, is set to replace Biagio Mazzotta as state accountant general, the officials said. She will become the first woman to hold the position.
Top bureaucrats are considered especially important in Italy, where they get a substantial say in economic policy making and oversight of state-controlled companies against the backdrop of regularly revolving governments.
The cabinet meeting scheduled on Aug. 7 will likely formalise Perrotta’s appointment, one of the officials said.
Mazzotta, 62, resigned on Thursday after being made chairman of state-controlled shipbuilder Fincantieri.
He has been widely criticised for failing to prevent a budget overshoot due to costly fiscal incentives for home renovation, which are expected to keep Italy’s mammoth public debt on an upward trend through 2026.
The incentives were introduced in 2020 by former Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and their take-up began to grow exponentially starting from the second half of 2021, during the government of Meloni’s predecessor Mario Draghi.
Even though Draghi was aware of the escalating problem, his government extended the Superbonus through 2025 under a phase-out arrangement. Meloni, who called it a budget “disaster”, imposed limits on who could access it, but did not kill the incentives given their popularity among taxpayers.
Perrotta played a role together with officials from Meloni’s office in drafting a windfall tax on bank profits last year that shocked the market, prompting the government to backtrack and give lenders the option of increasing reserve buffers instead of paying the levy.
(Reporting by Giuseppe Fonte;Editing by Elaine Hardcastle)
