France's budget deficit overshot forecasts in 2023, official figures showed Tuesday, undermining President Emmanuel Macron's pledge to bring national finances back on track within the next four years, reports The Economic Times.
The public deficit jumped to 5.5 percent of gross domestic product, or 154 billion euros ($167 billion), statistics agency INSEE said.
The slippage was "major" and "very, very rare" in French budgetary history, said Pierre Moscovici, the head of the Cour des Comptes (Court of Accounts), France's top audit institution tasked with watching over fiscal responsibility.
The government had already warned over recent weeks that it would not meet its own deficit estimate of 4.9 percent of GDP, citing the global economic slowdown and the war in Ukraine as key factors.
Fiscal receipts had turned out much worse than forecast last year, the government said Tuesday.
France has announced 10 billion euros of spending cuts to meet its deficit target for this year of 4.4 percent of GDP.