The BTP Più, the new Title of State dedicated to savers of which the MEF has set the guaranteed minimum rates: 2.80% in the first four years, 3.60% in the following four years for those who adhere to the placement that starts on Monday February 17 to end at 1pm on Friday 21. The definitive coupon rates, which can be confirmed or revised up compared to the minimum based on the market conditions of the closing day of the issue, will be announced at the end of the placement.
The values set today are “perfectly in line with the rates expressed by the market by the same deadline”, the general manager of the government bond market (MTS), Ciro Pietroluongo, tells Ansa. “Considered an inflation around 1.7% – says Pietroluongo -, it seems to me that they are quite rewarding rates. The fact of having further rewarded the deadlines is a further signature sign”. It is difficult to anticipate the collection that the MEF will be able to create, in a European market that has recently seen a rise in market rates driven by the US Treasuries despite the fact that the ECB is gradually cutting. “I believe – says Pietroluongo – that the results will still be good and I imagine them in line with the previous ones, but every emission has a life to itself”. The BTP “hypothesizes a certain stability of the rates,” explains Pietroluongo. Market sources indicate that a factor of uncertainty, as indeed for all non-indexed emissions to prices, could be the risk-inflation in an increasingly complex geopolitical scenario for global duties and commercial tensions.
However, the new retail placement, which is part of the BTP family value by sharing the growing coupons after four years (‘step up’) which encourage them to keep them in portfolio until expiry, introduces a ‘output window for those who subscribe from the placement . This is the early reimbursement option at the same time (the nominal value of the title), at the end of the fourth year, of the entire capital invested or even just its share. The option, which can be exercised between January 29 and February 16, 2029, wants to encourage savers who should be discouraged by the duration extended to the eight years of the BTP plus, chosen in the overall logic of lengthening the average duration of the Italian debt. As with all government bonds, then, there is a subsidized taxation at 12.5%, the exemption from succession taxes and the exclusion from the ISEE calculation to a maximum investment of 50,000 euros in total. Incentives with which the MEF aims to diversify the sources of financing of the Italian debt – which in December based on Bankitalia data is reduced under 3,000 billion to 2,965.7 billion – consolidating the retail portfolio. Because the ECB, a weight of weight in the past decade, since December is no longer there and indeed it is gradually abandoning its securities portfolio: at the end of 2024 the share of the debt held by the Bank of Italy, even if still remarkable, had decreased to 21.7% of the total from 24.2% of 2023.