ROME (Bloomberg) — Italians have declared 95 billion euros ($137.1 billion) under a tax-evasion amnesty for funds held abroad, the Finance Ministry said yesterday.

About 98 percent of the funds were brought back to Italy, the ministry said in an e-mailed statement. The amount declared is about six percent of the country's gross domestic product.

The amnesty, which allowed Italians to declare funds without penalty by paying a five percent fee to the government, was extended last week to April 30 from an initial December 15 deadline. The government plans to use the money it receives to lower the budget deficit. The new amnesty may attract another 30 billion euros, Milano Finanza reported today, without saying where it got the information.

The April date will be the "last and definitive" chance for taxpayers to declare funds illegally held abroad, the Ministry said yesterday. After that, 'the only alternative in all G- 20 countries will be the implementation of the new and very effective anti-evasion rules."

Revenue from the amnesty will be used to finance about 3.7 billion euros deficit reduction measures, about a third of the total included in the 2010 budget plan approved by the Parliament on December 22.

San Marino's central bank said assets worth 3.48 billion euros exited the country during the amnesty in neighbouring Italy. About 2.3 billion euros of bank deposits left, the central bank said in an e-mailed statement today.

The tiny republic, located near central Italy's Adriatic coast with a population of about 31,000, has been hit in recent months by both the Italian amnesty and a crackdown on tax havens by the Group of 20.