Italy's new Premier to be sworn in today

Italy's youngest prime minister, at 39, will be sworn in today. Centre-left leader Matteo Renzi yesterday appointed his 16-member Cabinet.

The Democratic Party leader has spent several days negotiating with factions to formalise his coalition.

Renzi ousted his party colleague Enrico Letta, who had led Italy for just 10 months.

The PM-designate has an ambitious plan for the country, promising to overhaul the jobs market and the tax and education systems within four months. He had criticised Letta's administration for the slow pace of economic reforms.

The new finance minister will be Pier Carlo Padoan, a senior economist at the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

The head of the Democratic Party's centre-right coalition partner, Angelino Alfano, remains as interior minister.

Half of the new Italian cabinet will be women.

Renzi unveiled his government on Friday and said the broad coalition would bring hope to the economically stagnant country.

After formally accepting the mandate to form the government, Renzi said he would waste no time in enacting reform.

“We aim tomorrow morning to immediately do the things that need to get done,” he said.

Renzi had been serving as Florence mayor when he engineered a power grab last week to effectively force his fellow Democrat Enrico Letta to step down after 10 months at the helm of a fragile, often-squabbling coalition.

However, he is depending on the same coalition partners and hopes that the government will last through to the end of the current parliament in 2018.

His Democrats will remain the biggest party, propped up by two smaller groupings supporters of former premier Mario Monti and former loyalists of Silvio Berlusconi.

Renzi recently cut a deal with Berlusconi, who has been kept out of office by a tax fraud conviction, to work swiftly for parliamentary passage of electoral reforms.