The official site of Italy's central bank

Treasury functions

The Bank of Italy acts as treasurer for the State. It handles the receipts and disbursements of government departments, at both provincial and central level. It also performs payment and collection services on behalf of governmental bodies.

The Bank performs payment services and accounting for the Treasury, at both provincial and central level: it carries out the payment orders issued by government departments and collects the amounts due to the State under any title, both directly and indirectly via the banks, the Post Office and tax collection offices; it receives and holds deposits in the form of postal savings certificates and cash. The Bank’s treasury functions include the settlement of payments concerning the public debt and the financial reporting to the government bodies and the State Audit Office.

The integration of the government receipts and disbursements circuit with the interbank settlement circuit underlies the “telematic treasury services”, based on the “Computerized System of Government Payments” (SIPA), which, through the dematerialization of accounting documents required by the government accounts and the use of the banking and PO circuits for the execution of payments, makes it possible to optimize the control on the financial and information flows in connection with public payments.

The Bank also runs the General Government Transactions Information System (SIOPE), which is intended to make detailed and homogeneous information available to the Ministry for the Economy and Finance on the receipts and disbursements of general government bodies. It will be possible to use the archive to obtain the general government borrowing requirement and improve the management of the accounts, with a view to constantly checking compliance with the budgetary rules established at European level.