Renzi calls for 'courage' after return to recession

Premier says must go forward with greater determination

(ANSA) - Rome, August 6 - Premier Matteo Renzi on Wednesday said his government had to have even more courage in working for change after national statistics agency Istat announced Italy had slipped into its third recession in five years. "The negative growth data should not lead us to make the usual automatic excuses," Renzi, the leader of the centre-left Democratic Party, said in a letter to the lawmakers supporting his executive. "We have to have the courage and desire to look at reality," added the premier, who has embarked on an ambitious reform programme after unseating his PD colleague Enrico Letta to take the helm of government in February. "Italy has everything needed to make it and emerge from the crisis. But it has to change.

"We have to keep going with even greater determination - without uncertainty, without fear, without braking. "The process of reform has begun. It's proceeding. A journey that there is no returning from has started". Italy posted positive growth for the first time in over two years when its GDP increased 0.1% in the final quarter of 2013 with respect to the previous three months. But hopes of recovery were quickly dashed when that gain was reversed in the first three months of 2014.

Istat's preliminary estimate Wednesday that GDP dropped 0.2% in the second quarter means that the country is officially back in recession. "In 2012 we registered negative growth of 2.4% in 2012, in 2013 -1.6%. In the first six months of 2014 were are at -0.3%. "We have to reverse the trend. But it only depends on us, on our work in parliament and in the country".