During 2009, the international financial crisis has continued to produce significant effects on the entire Euro area government bond market. The performance of Italian government bonds was largely influenced, on the one hand, by changes to risk aversion on international financial markets and hence on the global nature of cyclical and structural factors that determined it and, on the other, by the Eurosystem’s liquidity conditions resulting from the monetary policy choices of the European Central Bank. Hence, as in 2008, also in 2009 factors of international instability are the ones which have mainly led government bond performance indicators, at the expense of domestic factors which, instead, appear to have played a less significant role. Despite this general context, characterized by imbalances and conditions of significant instability on financial markets, the Treasury continued to guarantee the financing for the State Sector Borrowing Requirement through a policy of debt management appropriately aligned with changing market conditions. Some flexible instruments in the bond auction process introduced at the end of 2008 have been maintained and refined, in addition to issuance decisions aimed at achieving the objectives of the Treasury in a context of greater adherence to the changed conditions of the euro area government bond market. The increasingly intense dialogue with market operators has allowed the principles of transparency, predictability and regularity of debt issuance, even with the appropriate modifications, to be confirmed and implemented for the benefit of the issuer and the investors in Italian public debt. This approach was also maintained when, during the year, tensions on the markets gradually loosened. Faced with a progressive improvement of inter-bank market conditions and with a moderate increase in the liquidity of trading on the secondary market, the Treasury quickly made use of the changed environment to place on the market instruments whose launch is notoriously more complex, like two new nominal fixed rate bonds with 15 and 30 year maturities, and a new European inflation-linked bond (BTP€i) on the 30 year segment. It was thus possible to ensure a continuity of issuances on the market on all sectors of the yield curve, while allowing the issuer to achieve its strategic aims in terms of exposure of the State budget to market risks in a more efficient manner. While fully aware of the unpredictability of market dynamics, the Public Debt Management Guidelines for the year 2010 cannot disregard the results achieved in the year about to close and the management policies found below. Like last year, the detailed account of debt management in 2009 is postponed to an in-depth document to be published in the first months of 2010.