French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire pledged to accelerate the pace of debt reduction, a week after the country’s credit rating was cut.
(Bloomberg) — French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire pledged to accelerate the pace of debt reduction, a week after the country’s credit rating was cut.
“We have to reduce our debt, and in an accelerated way,” Le Maire said Friday in an interview on LCI television.
A 1 percentage point rise in interest rates will cost an additional €15 billion ($16.5 billion) to finance borrowing in 2027, he said.
“I have other things to do with EU15 billion,” Le Maire said, citing more spending on schools and hospitals.
Fitch Ratings reduced France’s credit rating to AA- from AA, with a stable outlook, bringing the euro area’s second-largest economy to the same notch as countries including Ireland and the Czech Republic. It is only the second time France has been downgraded since President Emmanuel Macron took office in 2017 and the first time by one of the three major rating firms.
“I take ratings agencies very seriously, but I didn’t wait for Fitch to sound the alarm,” Le Maire said on Friday. “We haven’t sat around doing nothing.”
“We will be responsible,” he said. “The state of our public finances requires that, with higher interest rates, we move quicker to lower our debt.”
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
©2023 Bloomberg L.P.