Italy, the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development
Italy shares the spiritual ideas of two Institutes and firmly intends to carry out the principles by which they are inspired. The features of Italy' s problem are: the burden of war destruction, the lack of raw materials and capital, and the large unemployment. If the assistance she requires materialises, Italy's agriculture might, within three or four years, regain her past level of production, and her two other main sources of foreign currency (the freights paid to the Italian Merchant Navy and the proceeds of tourism) could also be restored. The work of reconstruction proceeds with intensity. Efficiency is being slowly restored in Italy’s fìscal organization, and the monthly fiscal revenue has risen from ten billion lire in the second half of 1945 to about fifty billion lire now. If Italy receives the assistance of loans from abroad, and particularly from the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, she will soon be able to balance the public budget, to put a check to inflation pressure and to re-establish both her internal and international economic balance.