IT IS hard to detect any benefit for President François Hollande in the tax-avoidance scandal that cost him his budget minister in March. Jérôme Cahuzac, formerly responsible for curbing tax fraud, resigned after lying to parliament about a secret Swiss bank account, prompting a tough new transparency drive (see
article). But at least one side-effect of the affair has been to distract attention from the troubling state of the economy.On April 16th the IMF issued a grim reminder by forecasting that France will join Spain, Italy, Greece and Portugal in recession in 2013. The Fund now predicts that France’s GDP will fall by 0.1%. The worsening outlook leaves Mr Hollande’s government not only unable to stick to its promises of deficit reduction, but facing an internal political rebellion over how to manage its public finances.Despite the IMF, Pierre Moscovici, the finance minister, is standing by his forecast of growth of 0.1% in 2013 and 1.2% in 2014. He confirmed this on April 17th in France’s stability programme, which it will submit...
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