While the hypothesis of a third confinement is becoming more and more concrete, the prospects for economic recovery and growth darken for 2021. Nicolas Barré takes stock of a current economic issue.

The outlook for recovery is darkening and Bercy even envisages, in the worst case, a scenario without recovery by the end of the year.

The lack of visibility in terms of health is devastating.

Hence the economic scenarios that make the big difference.

The growth target for our economy this year is 6%, but we are in mid-January and it already seems difficult to achieve, Bercy does not hide it.

This is a scenario that had been developed under the assumption that there was no re-containment.

But today, because of the proliferation of variants of the virus, it can no longer be excluded, Olivier Véran repeated it this Thursday.

Containment is synonymous with an economic plunge.

The French economy falls more than elsewhere when there is containment, but it bounces higher when we return to normal, as we saw last summer.

The problem is that the return to normal is moving away and that is what derails the recovery scenarios.

Bercy is now even considering the worst, a scenario without recovery for the French economy by the end of the year.

In the event of re-containment and further deterioration of the health situation in Europe in the second half of the year.

It is certainly not the most likely, but it is possible.

A month of confinement is one point of annual growth less for our economy, it goes very quickly.

Are there still reasons to be a little more optimistic?

Yes !

First because according to our information, France will have enough to vaccinate 45 million people by June, if the green lights expected from the health authorities for the new vaccines which are arriving are given in due time.

This means that we would reach the target of 70% vaccinated by the end of the semester and that changes everything economically.

It would be a real return to normal.

Second reason for being more optimistic: the French have accumulated more than 100 billion euros in savings, the equivalent of a recovery plan!

We can then hope for a boom in consumption from the summer onwards, but consumption is the main engine of our economy.

Clearly, if we achieve the famous collective immunity, the restart of activity can be extremely fast because the resources are there and thanks to massive public aid, the economic fabric has been somehow preserved.

The bet on recovery is not lost!