Baptiste Morin with AFP / Photo credits: XOSE BOUZAS / HANS LUCAS / HANS LUCAS VIA AFP
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10:07 a.m., March 22, 2024
Bercy services envisage a slippage in the public deficit to 5.6% of GDP in 2023, 5.7% in 2024 and 5.9% in 2025, according to figures presented by the Budget rapporteur in the Senate, Jean-François Husson , who led a control mission to the Ministry of the Economy on Thursday. Senator Les Républicains denounced “disastrous budgetary management” and the government’s “withholding of information” on these figures, which nevertheless, according to him, are a “technical forecast to be taken with caution”.
He specified that these figures came from documents dating from February, a date before the announcement of a saving of 10 billion euros for 2024 made by the Minister of Finance Bruno Le Maire. But the differential is “out of all proportion” with recent government announcements, he added.
The general rapporteur castigated “disastrous budgetary management by the government which today proves incapable of following the budgetary trajectory that it itself had adopted”, calling for “a collective start to put France back on the right track”. In its financial programming, France has so far forecast a deficit of 4.9% of GDP in 2023, 4.4% in 2024 and 3.7% in 2025.
“The results of this control are edifying”
Worse, according to Jean-François Husson, the government was “alerted as early as December” about the slippage in the deficit for the year 2023, then envisaged at 5.2% of GDP on that date, in full examination of the finance bill in Parliament. “It took a quarter for the government to come out of the woods,” said Senator LR.
In the afternoon, the general rapporteur of the Budget exercised his powers of control over the government’s action, initiating an audit “on documents and on the spot” – a prerogative of the standing committees and commissions of inquiry of Parliament. “The results of this control are edifying since the budgetary situation is in fact worse than we imagined,” he concluded, five days before the publication by INSEE of the official figure for the public deficit for the year 2023.
Bruno Le Maire’s entourage ensures that the minister reacted on time. A meeting between the government and opposition groups is already planned for next week.