PARIS (Reuters) – France’s economic growth will be dependent upon its COVID-19 vaccination programme, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire told Le Parisien newspaper in an interview published on its website on Saturday.
Concerns are increasing in France over the impact of the Delta variant of the coronavirus, which now represents around a third of France’s cases, Health Minister Olivier Veran said on Friday.
Le Maire had said at the end of June that he would keep his 5% French economic growth forecast for 2021, rather than give a higher estimate such as one made by the Bank of France, because of the risks posed by the Delta variant, first detected in India.
“Our growth will be dependent upon vaccination,” Le Maire told Le Parisien.
(Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta; editing by Grant McCool)
