ROME (Reuters) - Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi's economic adviser has resigned over the government's reluctance to make targeted cuts in public spending.
Roberto Perotti, an economics professor at Milan's Bocconi University, was recruited by Renzi in September last year to try to identify cuts to unproductive spending, but most of his proposals were disregarded.
"Let's say that I felt I wasn't particularly useful," Perotti told Reuters on Tuesday, confirming that he had handed in his resignation as he announced in a television interview on Monday evening.
Attempts by successive Italian governments to cut waste, as part of a spending review, have faltered in the face of opposition from politicians and interest groups.
Renzi's 2016 budget, presented last month, included some 7 billion euros ($7.48 billion) of cuts, less than a previous target of 10 billion.
Moreover, those cuts were largely broad reductions in funding for ministries and regional authorities, rather than specific line items that Perotti and another spending review commissioner were responsible for identifying.
In particular, Renzi rejected Perotti's proposals for eliminating numerous tax breaks for companies. Perotti said the tax breaks were unjustified and provided little benefit to the economy.
This time last year, the spending review commissioner at the time, Carlo Cottarelli, resigned in protest at the 2015 budget after Renzi ignored many of his proposals, such as slashing the number of public bodies and trimming generous state pensions.
(Reporting By Gavin Jones, editing by Larry King)
