Cocaine Sales to Boost Italian GDP in Boon for Budget

Mr Gently Benevolent gives us a summary:

Italy will include prostitution and illegal drug sales in the gross domestic product calculation this year, a boost for its chronically stagnant economy and Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s effort to meet deficit targets.

Bloomberg has the story. Makes no sense to me. We're talking about the black market here, a place not known for publishing acccurate profit and loss statements, so Senori Renzi is just going to be making up numbers. That's fine as long as everyone knows that that is what he is doing. But I can see this becoming a popular technique with politicians all around the world and they'll be bragging about how much toot their countrymen are consuming. Of course, most everything that politicians say now is pretty worthless. This will just be icing on the cake.

Update September 2015. Added 2nd that.