A new indicator has just given an alert in this regard. The forecasts gathered by Consensus Economics from about twenty economists were revised downwards at the end of last week: now growth in France is expected to be +1.7% this year and the same next year.
This means a decrease of 0.2 percentage points for GDP in 2018, and 0.1 percentage points for 2019 compared to the expectations three months ago. It is especially lower than the figures put forward by Bercy in the spring, which were 2% this year and 1.9% next year, and which will need to be revised in the draft budget law presented at the end of September.
This slowdown comes at a bad time for the executive. The budgetary equation was based on strong growth. Growth was supposed to help reduce the deficit.
Until now, the government hoped for strong growth allowing it to fund reforms while reducing the public deficit, which was expected to fall to 2.3% this year and next.
Unless the executive tightens the screws further on savings: the growth of spending excluding inflation is supposed to be reduced from 0.7% to 0.4% in 2019, a level scarcely reached in the past two decades.
