France's rebound will not be spectacular, but the economic outlook does point to a way out of the crisis.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) expects a gross domestic product (GDP) of 5.8% in France in 2021, according to its global economic forecasts published on Tuesday.
More generally, Gita Gopinath, the IMF's chief economist, believes that “despite the great uncertainty about the evolution of the pandemic, we increasingly see the way out of this health and economic crisis”.
In particular driven by the growth of the United States and China.
On a planetary scale, France is doing well: it should experience a slightly lower growth than the world economy (+ 6%) but more efficient than that of the euro zone (+ 4.4%) , including Germany (+ 3.6%).
The IMF has slightly revised its forecasts upwards: in January, the monetary body rather expected GDP growth in France of 5.5%.
This optimistic revision, however, does not take into account the new restrictive measures taken last week to limit the spread of the epidemic in France.
Because they have led the government to revise downward this weekend its growth forecast for 2021: it only expects 5% instead of the 6% hoped for so far, due to the closure of certain businesses. and schools across the country.
However, this figure remains high compared to the 8.2% plunge recorded in 2020.
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The Governor of the Banque de France François Villeroy de Galhau, for his part, estimated that these measures "should not lead to a very significant revision of (his) forecast" of 5.5% growth for 2021 if they do not last for the next year. -beyond "early May".
France should return to its pre-pandemic level of growth in 2022
In 2022, France is expected to post a growth rate of 4.2%, almost equal to what the IMF expected in January.
2022 is the horizon at which the GDP of France and the euro zone should return to their pre-pandemic level.
On the other hand, the United States, where the vaccination campaign is in full swing, should this year regain a level of wealth higher than that which they knew before the outbreak of the health crisis, just like China.
For the IMF, which three months ago forecast a 5.5% increase in economic activity in 2021, the improvement in the overall outlook is mainly to be credited to the United States, where growth could reach 6%. , 4% this year, unheard of since the early 1980s. But it would follow a drop of 3.3% in 2020, the worst contraction since World War II.
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The United Kingdom, which left the European internal market at the beginning of January, benefits like the United States from an improvement in its prospects thanks to a vaccination campaign much faster than in continental Europe.
British GDP is expected to increase by 5.3% this year, according to the IMF, which raised its estimate by 0.8 point compared to January.
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More generally, however, the organization underlines the persistence of a high degree of uncertainty, explaining that "further progress in vaccination may lead to an increase in forecasts while new variants of the virus resistant to vaccines may lead to a sharp decline ”.