ECB’s Villeroy: France should escape recession this year, inflation still too high

PARIS (Reuters) – France should escape recession this year and still have positive economic growth, said Bank of France governor and European Central Bank (ECB) member Francois Villeroy de Galhau.

“Our central scenario is for positive economic growth this year,” he told RTL radio, although he added inflation was still too high and hitting consumers’ spending power.

On Tuesday, the Bank of France cut France’s economic growth outlook.

The euro zone’s second-biggest economy was set to grow 2.3% this year, before slowing to 1.2% in 2023 and picking up to 1.7% in 2024 as the impact of the crisis subsided, the Bank of France said in its quarterly outlook.

(Reporting by Benoit Van Overstraeten; Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta)