Although the rebound of the economy in 2021 has enabled this start of improvement in public finances, the debt has nevertheless increased further in absolute value by nearly 165 billion euros, to 2,813.1 billion euros, while that the public deficit reached 160.9 billion euros, against 205.5 billion at the end of 2020.
Last year, the debt had soared to 114.6% and the deficit had widened to 8.9%, record levels, according to revised figures published by the National Institute of Statistics.
If the public accounts look a little better in 2021, this is mainly due to the strong 7% rebound in the French economy after the historic 8% recession suffered by France in 2020 due to the health crisis.
This recovery notably enabled state and administrative revenues to rebound "vigorously" by 8.4%, underlines INSEE, or +101.8 billion euros.
The resumption of employment, in particular led to better receipts of contributions, which lightened the social security accounts.
Over the year, public administration expenditure (State, local authorities and Social Security) increased by 4%, or +57.1 billion euros.
They thus represent 59.2% of GDP, thus maintaining themselves "beyond their pre-crisis level", notes INSEE.
Growth having been stronger than expected, these results are a little better than what the government expected last autumn, since it was counting on a public deficit of 8.4% and a debt of 114%.
For this year, he plans at this stage to reduce the public deficit to 5% of GDP, in particular thanks to a still dynamic growth of 4%.
But that was before the outbreak of war in Ukraine and new spending announced to counter inflation.
In 2019, before the health crisis, the debt stood at 97.6% of GDP and the deficit at 3.1%.
© 2022 AFP