A “circle of forecasts” that brings together administrations, economists and public finances experts met for the first time on Tuesday, established by the Ministry of Economy to improve the management of public accounts after budgetary landslides of 2023 and 2024 ” press.
Two annual meetings
In addition to the administrations concerned with the development of budgets, there have been part of the representatives of the Banking of France, the Insee, the CAE (Economic Analysis Council), the IPP (Public Policy Institute) and the OFCE (French Observatory for Economic Conditions), as well as economists of international banks that specialize in the values of the Tesura, according to the same source.
This “circle of economists” is expected to meet twice a year, the next meeting scheduled for September, before the presentation of the Finance Law for 2026, said the Ministry of Public Accounts.
The Government had presented an “Action Plan” on March 3 to improve the management of public finances, providing the creation of this circle responsible for examining the relevance of the prognosis hypotheses and an “alert committee” that associates Parliament.
Pierre Moscovici judges the “too optimistic” forecasts
At the end of an investigation into the reasons for the budgetary landslides, the National Assembly Finance Committee had made recommendations in April to avoid repeating: improve the quality of forecasts and strengthening the management of public finances and information from parliamentarians. He also mentioned the “interruption of the models” of Bercy’s forecasts in a context of inflationary crisis, which resulted in lower revenues than more than 60 billion euros in 2023 and 2024.
“Greetings of this shared desire to improve the forecast government. The question is whether this movement goes far enough,” said Pierre Moscowici, first president of the Court of Auditors and president of the High Public Finance Council (HCFP) during a conference on Tuesday.
“I do not say here, above all, that everything was predictable (…), but there is still a lot of voluntarism, even a certain arrogance in the forecasts,” he said, addressing the forecasts he considers “too optimistic.” The Government plans to return the deficit to 5.4% of GDP in 2025 with an expected growth to 0.7%, and return to less than 3% in 2029 “. The prognosis by 2025 seems to be attainable, but the uncertainties are strong and respect for the objective of the deficit is still far from acquiring,” said Pierre Moscovici.
Source: BFM TV
