Paris (AFP)
The coronavirus will plunge France into recession in 2020, estimated Tuesday the Minister of Economy Bruno Le Maire, who announced that the government now expected a decline in gross domestic product (GDP) of 1%.
The government, which must present "in a few hours" an amending finance bill, will register "as growth forecast in 2020 -1%, that is to say negative growth", the minister said on RTL adding that this figure was "provisional".
The spread of the virus in the territory led the executive to introduce from Tuesday strict travel restrictions for the French, effectively slowing economic activity, while many companies have already suffered for weeks from repercussions of the epidemic.
The fight against the coronavirus is therefore "also an economic and financial war", said Bruno Le Maire, echoing the words of Emmanuel Macron Monday evening who spoke of a France "at war" health against the virus.
This economic war "it will be lasting, it will be violent, it must mobilize all our forces", insisted the Minister of Economy.
He thus announced that the government was going to mobilize in an "immediate" way 45 billion euros to support the companies and the employees, in particular via the deferral of the payment of all the tax and social charges due by the companies.
A solidarity fund of 1 billion euros "minimum" will also be created "for microentrepreneurs, for the smallest businesses, for the self-employed, who have less than a million in turnover" and who "have lost, between March 2019 and March 2020, 70% of their turnover ".
"We want solidarity to play to the full," insisted the minister. "We will make it simple. We will make massive and we will make solidarity: 1,500 euros, this is the basic rate which will be guaranteed in a lump sum form to any company which would enter this field", he detailed.
This fund "is there to provide a safety net to all those who do not come under the other aid that is provided," he added.
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