PARIS (Reuters) – The French economy is set to contract 11% this year due to the coronavirus crisis and a nationwide lockdown to contain it, Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said on Tuesday.
“We were hard hit by the virus, we took effective measures to protect French people’s health but the economy practically ground to a halt for three months,” Le Maire said on RTL radio.
“We’re going to pay for it with growth,” he said, adding that a budget update being prepared would forecast a contraction of 11% versus one of 8% forecast previously.
(Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta and Leigh Thomas; editing by Jason Neely)
