The government can (almost) be relieved: growth in France has returned in the third quarter of 2016.
This is enough to momentarily make us forget the disastrous figures from the April-June period when growth was worse than zero.
A slight growth of 0.2% in the third quarter of 2016
INSEE was right: it expected a growth of 0.2% in France for the third quarter of 2016.
The figures confirm this: in the third quarter, growth was indeed 0.2% in France.
The government can therefore breathe a sigh of relief: after zero growth, later revised downwards to negative for the second quarter of 2016 (-0.1%), growth has returned. However, there remains the issue of the annual growth of the country, which is very likely to be less than what the government hoped for throughout the year.
1.3% growth in 2016? INSEE revised its annual growth forecast to 1.3% in September 2016 because the Institute was predicting a growth of 0.2% in the third quarter and 0.4% in the fourth.
And 1.5%? The Government, in fact, anticipated a growth of 1.5% for 2016: not only did it repeat this throughout the year, but it also based its 2016 budget on this level of growth.
As a result, the reduction of the deficit will also be lower than expected.
An additional challenge for the government, which promised Brussels to have a deficit of 2.7% in 2017.
