FR40 CAC40:FUNDAMENTAL NEWS+TECHNICAL VIEW | LONG 🔔France: Growth Slows as Repercussions of Russia-Ukraine Conflict Darken Inflation and Fiscal Outlooks
Rising spending in dealing with economic and geopolitical repercussions of Russia’s further incursion in the Ukraine additionally weigh on France’s already weakened fiscal outlook as recovery slows, exacerbating long-run credit challenges.
Our baseline economic forecast of France is for modest recovery with real growth of 3.6% for 2022 before 2.1% in 2023 (-0.3pps), as growth slows across the euro area.
Under a more stressed economic scenario, with higher and more long-lasting price pressures, output growth slows more significantly. However, we assume the energy price shock proves temporary, given futures of oil and gas prices indicating a downward price trend over a next 12 months.
One of the main knock-on effects is pressure on government to mitigate inflation and raise defence expenditure
One of the main adverse knock-on effects of Russia’s further invasion of the Ukraine for France is pressure the government at this stage faces in mitigating impact of rising inflation as well as to raise defence spending – just as, moreover, recovery from the Covid-19 crisis and associated revenue growth have started slowing.
The resulting excess deficit puts pressure on French public finances, which have already deteriorated under the context of the Covid-19 crisis, leaving the country with limited room to raise spending further. French general government debt reached around 115% of GDP in 2021, up from 98% of GDP in 2019.
On 16 March, the government announced a fresh package of measures aimed at provision of relief for households and firms hit by rising energy and other prices, including a discount of 15-euro cents a litre on petrol between April and July, energy-price related subsidies for firms and the strengthening of state-backed corporate liquidity facilities.
Including previously introduced budgetary support since last September, these measures amount to an aggregate cost of EUR 25bn (circa 1% of GDP). The government has as well started discussion around an increase of civil service salaries in response to rising costs.
France does have the advantage, as compared with Germany especially, of comparatively low reliance on oil and gas imports, given Electricité de France’s large park of nuclear power stations, helping ultimately contain France’s rate of inflation as compared with that of the rest of the euro area and expected to cap additional government compensation paid to households and businesses.
