The French Central Bank expected yesterday that the country’s economic growth would slow significantly in 2023 due to energy and inflation crises but said that it would return to recovery in 2024 and 2025.
GDP growth will decline from 2.6% in 2022 to 0.3% next year, according to the central bank’s “most probable” scenario over the next three years. A 1.2-per cent rebound will follow the slowdown in growth in 2024.
A recovery of 1.2% will follow a slowdown in France’s economic growth in 2024. Central Bank Director General Olivier Garnier said that this is less than the 1.8% previously expected because the situation in the winter of 2023-2024 “may remain somewhat complicated due to the energy crisis.”
The rebound will continue in 2025 when growth is expected to reach 1.8 per cent, the bank said. However, these projections are still clouded largely by volatile energy prices, geopolitical tensions, especially the Ukraine war, and uncertainty about the COVID-19 situation in China.
French Central Bank appear less optimistic than those issued by the government, which expects a growth rate of 2.7% in 2022 and 1% in 2023.
“We cannot rule out a recession, but if it does, it will be limited and short,” Garnier said. Oil and gas prices are expected to decline from the high levels witnessed this year, but they will remain relatively high and will continue to fuel inflation and raise food prices.
By the end of 2022, prices will have increased by 7.3%. The French Central Bank stated that inflation will continue to rise in the first half of 2023 before it declines again to 4% at the end of next year and 2% at the end of 2024.