PARIS, Sept 2 (Reuters) – This summer’s drought and heatwaves could shave 0.1 percentage points off French economic growth this year, mainly due to lost farming revenue, the Finance Ministry said on Wednesday.
The ministry, however, stressed this was just an estimate at this stage and not an official update of its forecast for French growth, which currently stands at 0.7% for 2026.
• The potential drag on overall growth mainly reflected an estimated 8% drop in agricultural value creation, with the impact of extreme weather exacerbated by higher fertiliser costs, the ministry said.
• That would nonetheless be less than an estimated 15% fall for farming in 2003, another year of severe summer weather in France, it said.
• The impact on other sectors appeared more limited and localised, the ministry added.
• Also on Wednesday, the head of France’s main farmers’ union, the FNSEA, told reporters that agricultural production losses this summer would surpass €10 billion ($11.58 billion), with more than €5 billion already estimated for both livestock and crop sectors.
• Arnaud Rousseau called for “a massive response” from the authorities to prevent farms stopping their activity.
• The agriculture ministry said the announcement of an aid package for farmers due on Thursday had been postponed for a few days as discussions continued.
• The ministry had said last week the plan would include several hundred million euros in compensation for weather-linked damage.
• The INSEE statistics agency last week revised economic growth for the second quarter from 0.2% in an initial reading to 0.0%, putting the government’s full-year forecast of 0.7% all but out of reach.
• Finance Minister Roland Lescure said the INSEE downgrade “is the first impact of the horrible summer that we had.”
($1 = 0.8633 euros)
(Reporting by Dominique Vidalon, Gus Trompiz and Sybille de La Hamaide;Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta and Gareth Jones)
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