JAKARTA - The Governor of the Bank of France (BoF), Francois Villeroy de Galhau, said the French economy began to show signs of reviving. According to him, even the French economy will revive a little faster than previously thought after being hit by the COVID-19 outbreak.
Quoted from Reuters, Monday, July 6, it was stated that the French Central Bank predicted last month, the country with the second largest economy in the eurozone would contract 12 percent below normal levels by the end of June 2020.
That estimate is up from a 32 percent drop at the start of the COVID-19 lockdown that hit France in late March 2020.
The French Senral Bank will then update its economic growth estimates on Tuesday and draw responses from its monthly business climate survey of thousands of companies.
"The recovery is going at least as we expected and maybe a little bit better," said Villeroy.
In June, the central bank predicted the French economy may contract by 15 percent in the second quarter.
Earlier, the French Central Bank issued a statement last month estimating the French economy will take two years to recover from its worst recession since World War Two. The BOF also predicts that the French economy will contract 10.3 percent this year, then grow by 6.9 percent in 2021 and again increase by 3.9 percent in 2022.
The French Central Bank said bright prospects could be achieved more quickly if the spread of COVID-19 could be controlled and there was no second wave of the pandemic.
These economic projections do not yet calculate the potential impact of the recovery plan that the government could potentially announce in the coming months.
As is known, the President of France, Emmanuel Macron locked France since mid-March. This effectively shut down most economic activity until the restrictions started lifting on May 11.
At the end of May, economic activity in France was just 17 percent below normal levels, although up from the 32 percent decline seen during the locked first two weeks of March.
However, the French Central Bank also said that the time spent in this lockdown also caused the French economy in the second quarter of 2020 to contract by 15 percent. Even though in the first quarter of 2020, the French economy had fallen by 5.3 percent.
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