France boosts economic support to ease Ukraine crisis fallout
PARIS (Reuters) – The French authorities offered on Wednesday a brand new spherical of measures to assist households, firms, farmers and fishermen deal with the financial fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“We’ve to organize for an extended disaster,” Prime Minister Jean Castex advised a information convention as he offered the brand new “resilience plan”.
“We should put together immediately measures to restrict the affect on our firms, our jobs and our buying energy”, he advised journalists.
With a presidential election looming subsequent month, the federal government already final 12 months capped fuel and energy worth will increase and supplied monetary handouts to low-income households to deal with greater power costs and inflation.
Because the Ukraine disaster places extra strain on costs, Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire mentioned that the extra measures would deliver the whole invoice to 25-26 billion euros ($27.5-$28.6 billion).
Among the many new measures, Castex mentioned the federal government would cowl greater than half of the price of firms’ improve of their fuel and energy payments to assist take in losses they might have in any other case suffered.
In the meantime, corporations scuffling with excessive power costs or the lack of export markets would be capable to get tax and payroll prices postponed.
Castex mentioned that the federal government would additionally extend and increase state-guaranteed loans arrange through the COVID-19 disaster in addition to reactivate a subsidised furlough scheme for corporations affected by a drop in consumer demand.
With gasoline costs at a file excessive, a 15 cent per litre gasoline low cost introduced this weekend could be broadened to incorporate pure fuel utilized in autos whereas TotalEnergies had indicated it might add an extra low cost at its petrol stations, Castex mentioned.
The brand new package deal additionally included measures targetting the fishing, street transport and building sectors.
($1 = 0.9088 euro)
(Reporting by Dominique Vidalon and Leigh Thomas; Enhancing by GV De Clercq)
