PARIS (Reuters) – The French government on Wednesday presented its second amending budget for 2022, which includes funding for new measures to support purchasing power in the face of soaring energy prices and anticipates a slight improvement in the forecast public deficit this year, notably under the effect of higher-than-expected revenues.
This traditional end-of-year amending finance bill (PLFR) confirms the growth (+2.7%) and inflation (+5.3%) forecasts for 2022 included in the finance bill (PLF) for 2023 being examined in Parliament, but slightly revises its public deficit forecast, now expected at 4.9% of gross domestic product (GDP) at the end of the year, against 5.0% so far .
Like the first PLFR for 2022, adopted this summer in parallel with the “purchasing power package”, this second PLFR of the year “plans for new support measures for households and the economy”, underlined Wednesday the door- speech of the government, Olivier Véran, during the report of the Council of Ministers.
Among the measures formalized by this amending budget is in particular the “exceptional energy voucher” of 100 or 200 euros which the 12 million most modest French households (i.e. 40% of households) will receive by the end of the year, as announced in mid-September by Elisabeth Borne.
This end-of-year PLFR also includes the financing of the extension of the fuel discount at its current level of 30 cents until mid-November, or even exceptional aid to help universities cope with the rising energy costs.
In total, in this new amending budget, the support measures to cushion the impact of the rise in energy prices correspond to 2.4 billion euros in new expenditure.
(Written by Myriam Rivet, edited by Jean-Stéphane Brosse)
Copyright © 2022 Thomson Reuters