The government has lowered its forecast for the growth of the French economy in 2016 from 1.5% to 1.4%,
The team around Mr. Sapin at Bercy pointed out that the reduction of 0.1 percentage point of GDP did not change “the dynamic at play for a year and a half.
This 1.4% target was deemed “achievable” by the High Council of Public Finances (HCPF), an independent body responsible for assessing the credibility of the executive’s budgetary forecasts, in an opinion to the government made public on Friday.
The figure of 1.4% remains nonetheless higher than the forecasts of Insee, the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund, and the OECD, who are betting on a 1.3% increase in GDP in 2016.
According to Bercy, this reduction in forecasts does not call into question the goal of reducing the public deficit to 3.3% of GDP this year. The HCPF considered this goal “realistic,” adding that it remained contingent “on the strict management of spending at the end of the year.”
The European Commission estimated that Paris’s deficit target of 3.3% this year should be met.
