France's economy will shrink by only 2.25% this year rather than by 3% as forecast and will return to positive growth in 2010, Prime Minister Francois Fillon said today.
'The crisis isn't over. The crisis won't be over until unemployment starts to come down. But we have a landscape that is evolving positively,' he said, predicting that the French economy will grow by 0.75% next year.
Last week, the French central bank forecast that the economy would expand by 0.3% in the third quarter of this year, confirming a trend that had seen it emerge from a year-long recession in the second quarter.
Despite signs of recovery, however, the jobless total has continued to rise, albeit more slowly after the number of jobseekers increased by more than 25% between June 2008 and June 2009 to more than 2.5 million.
