The Minister of Budget and Public Accounts, Laurent Saint-Martin, stated on Sunday that he is neither “opposed” nor “scandalized” by the principle of selling state stakes in certain companies to pay the French debt, although he expressed some reservations.
“I have never opposed the debate on transfers of state participations,” he indicated on France Inter/France Télévisions, asked about a proposal by former ministers Olivia Grégoire and Gérald Darmanin and deputy Mathieu Lefèvre.
In an article published on Sunday in La Tribune, the three Renaissance deputies propose selling “shares in which the State itself no longer really understands its role or its mission.” They target “in particular 180 billion shares in listed companies: selling just 10% of these shares would generate as much or even more than the counterproductive increase in corporate tax or the increase in labor costs planned by the government,” they say. . say.
The Public Accounts Minister said at midday on Sunday that it was an “interesting debate”, although he expressed some reservations. “We must always weigh between the sale of shares that allows the repayment of the debt (…) and the dividend deficit that this creates if you sell your shares,” he stressed, taking the example of the State’s participation in EDF.
“You have to look sector by sector”
In the 2025 budget, “there is an exceptional dividend paid by EDF, a public company. If tomorrow EDF were no longer a public company, this dividend would not contribute to reducing our deficit,” he explained. “Every time we have to look sector by sector, company by company,” he argued, “but the principle of having a portfolio of state participations and asking ourselves what is the relevance today. “Today these participations do not surprise me at all.” “.
In general, the minister defended the 2025 budget as “a balanced budget” and questioned the forecasts of the French Observatory of Economic Conditions (OFCE), which expects a slowdown in growth to 0.8%, that is, 0.3 points less than the executive’s forecast. “These are not our estimates. We have forecast 1.1% growth, which is already growth effectively affected by the slowdown that this budget may create,” he said.
“This budget is neither fiscal nor draconian of austerity. It is a balanced budget that will probably not slow down this growth too much,” he justified, “so we believe that a growth of 1.1% is a realistic forecast.”
Source: BFM TV
