By Alimat Aliyev

The Bank of France, acting as the country's central bank, has revised downwards its forecast for GDP growth in 2024, Azernews reports, citing foreign media outlets.

The initial growth estimate was 0.9%, whereas now the French Central Bank forecasts an increase in GDP of only 0.8%. This revision is due to worse-than-expected economic growth in the last quarter of 2023.

It is noteworthy that this estimate is noticeably lower than the 1% growth promised by the Ministry of Economy, Finance, Industrial and Digital Sovereignty of France. However, at the beginning of the year, the government was forced to sharply adjust the forecast laid down in the budget for 2024, adopted without a vote in parliament. Last year, the authorities expected the economy to grow by 1.4% in 2024.

The head of the economic department, Bruno Le Maire, admitted that at the end of 2023, budget revenues turned out to be 4.4 billion euros less than the planned level, and also admitted that the level of the budget deficit would be "significantly higher" than the previously announced 4.9%.

Against this background, he promised to implement a plan to reduce the costs of ministries by 10 billion euros. At a hearing in the parliamentary committee, the minister-delegate responsible for public accounts, Thomas Cazenave, clarified that in 2025 the government will have to find a way to save 20 billion euros.
Inflation has been rising in France since the end of 2020. The average annual growth in consumer prices in the country in 2023 was 4.9%.