Central bank sees French GDP down 9-10% in 2020

November 9, 2020: France's central bank said Monday it expects economic activity to decline between 9 and 10 percent this year, a bigger drop than previously forecast due to a new lockdown.

While the new confinement measures will deepen the recession, the Banque de France believes that they will be far less destructive than during the country's first confinement earlier this year.

"Before the second wave, we thought the recession would be a little less than 9 percent, we think today that for 2020 as a whole it will be between 9 and 10 percent," Banque de France chief Francois Villeroy de Galhau said on RTL.

The central bank had forecast in September that economic activity, or GDP, would decline by 8.7 percent this year.

But that was before the rapid rise in Covid-19 cases in France in October, which led the government to impose a second lockdown.

The bank estimated that the new lockdown will cost the nation's economy 12 percent of GDP compared to a normal week in November.

APP