“We are not there,” replied the governor of the Banking of France on Thursday, questioned about the risk agitated by the government of a tutoring of France by the IMF in case of a drift of the accounts, a few days before the announcement of a large savings plan for Matignon.
The International Monetary Fund “intervenes in an extreme situation, when a country can no longer leave it alone. We are not there, we have our destiny in our hands, but it is now that we must act,” said François Villeroy de Galhau, presenting before the press the annual report of the balance of payments to the bench of Paris.
“I hope we don’t need the IMF to realize that the subject is extremely serious,” he said, adding that “he had never used this expression,” about the word guardianship.
Always 40 billion to find
The Minister of Public Accounts, Amélie de Montchalin, again said on Wednesday the risk “that one day, that international institutions decide for us”, after mentioning several times in recent weeks the risk of “guardianship” of international institutions, including the IMF, in case of a drift of public accounts.
These warnings occur before the Government announced, on July 15, a large savings plan that must represent a budget effort of 40 billion euros.
“Obviously you have to do everything to avoid that, our budget destiny is in our hands,” said François Villeroy de Galhau.
An IMF intervention, as in Greece in the 2010, seems unlikely, especially because since then the European Union has implemented its own emergency intervention systems, through the European stability mechanism (month) and the European Central Bank (ECB).
The chief economist of the Washington institution, interviewed in mid-June, had said that “the question could arise but, I mean that no tomorrow or the afternoon. If nothing really was done (…), if there was no desire to influence the trajectory of the debt, obviously at some point, the question would arise,” said Pierre-Lolivier Gourincas.
Source: BFM TV
