PARIS (Reuters) – Economy and Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire has had “very close discussions” with Standard & Poor’s, days before a new assessment of France by the rating agency, said Sunday Elisabeth Borne.
“We recently presented a trajectory of our finances until 2027, in which we want (…) to reduce our deficit to 2.7% (of GDP). We also have in this commitment the objective of reducing our debt and this is what the Minister of the Economy had the opportunity to explain to Standard & Poor’s”, said the Prime Minister at the microphone of Radio J.
Bruno Le Maire reaffirmed, on April 28, the government’s determination to reduce the deficit after France’s credit rating was downgraded by one notch to AA- by Fitch Ratings, another rating agency which considered in particular that the executive relied on overly optimistic growth forecasts.
The Standard & Poor’s agency is due to publish its opinion on Friday.
“I’m not going to speak for Standard & Poor’s, but I think there were detailed explanations from Bruno Le Maire to Standard & Poor’s on everything we’re doing to control our public spending and I think that we act in this direction”, underlined Elisabeth Borne.
In its new stability program presented in April, the Ministry of the Economy expects the public debt, which reached a record level of almost 3,000 billion euros at the end of 2022, to drop from 111, 6% of GDP last year to 109.6% in 2023, then to 108.3% in 2027.
(Written by Jean-Stéphane Brosse, with the contribution of Sybille de La Hamaide)
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