Italy pledges efforts for potential growth

UNITED NATIONS - Italy on Wednesday pledged continued efforts to further strengthen fiscal sustainability and enhance potential growth, which was affected by the global financial crisis over the past years.

The statement came as Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti was taking the floor at the General Debate of the 67th session of the UN General Assembly, which entered its second day Wednesday.

"Italy will continue to do its part to further strengthen fiscal sustainability and enhance potential growth," Monti told the 193-member General Assembly. "We cannot overlook the importance of the measures being taken at the EU level to strengthen governance and fiscal integration. It is also essential that European Governments deliver at the national level."

Italy has averted the worst case scenario of the debt crisis, and economic recovery in the eurozone's third largest economy is within reach, Monti said in early September in Rome, the Italian capital.

Italy was now among the European countries that would decide how to help deal with the Greek debt crisis, and it was not by chance that Italy had regained "a respected position in a decision- making team", the prime minister said.

Since Monti took office last November, his emergency cabinet of non-political technocrats has striven to cut the deficit and lower borrowing costs through a harsh austerity policy.

"In 2011 the financial markets have shown serious new signs of tension, due primarily to the deterioration of public finances," the prime minister said at the UN General Assembly. "What we are experiencing is not a recurrent cyclical imbalance: it is the deepest and worst crisis in the history of the European Union."