PARIS — France's
budget deficit for 2021 will stand at 220 billion euros, some 47 billion higher
than previously estimated, Olivier Dussopt, public accounts minister, told AFP on Saturday.
اضافة اعلان
The increase is "a result of supporting measures that
we're continuing to take to support the recovery" from the devastating
effects that
COVID-19 shutdowns wreaked on the eurozone's second-largest
economy, he said.
It is not yet clear how the revised numbers will affect the
budget deficit when expressed as percentage of GDP, which was previously
forecast to hit 9 percent this year, a postwar record. Public debt was
previously forecast to reach 118 percent of GDP.
The
COVID-19 pandemic is expected to cost the French state
nearly half a trillion euros over three years — 158 billion euros in 2020, an
expected 171 billion euros in 2021 and a forecast 96 billion euros in 2022,
Dussopt said in April.
France has borrowed heavily to try to keep the economy
afloat through three nationwide lockdowns, including money spent on supporting
salaries of people furloughed and aid for companies struggling to stay afloat
during the crisis.
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