France plans to mobilize 45 billion euros (US$50 billion) in crisis measures to help its companies, with the economy likely to shrink 1 percent this year due to the COVID-19 outbreak, French Minister of Finance Bruno Le Maire said yesterday.
A large part of the 45 billion euro figure was the deferral of all tax payments and payroll charges that companies were due to pay this month and the cancellation of such payments for firms at risk of collapse, Le Maire said.
“We are going to mobilize 45 billion euros as our first immediate economic assistance to companies,” Le Maire told French RTL radio. “We don’t want bankruptcies.”
Photo: AFP
The money comes in addition to 300 billion euros in government loan guarantees that French President Emmanuel Macron announced on Monday, Le Maire said.
He said that he would produce a new budget bill “in a matter of hours” to reflect fallout from the virus and based on a forecast that the economy would contract 1 percent this year.
Asked whether the stock market should be closed in light of the economic turmoil, Le Maire said that there were other things that could be done first, such as banning short-selling, which he said the markets regulator was doing for 24 hours.
Meanwhile, Airbus SE is stopping production and assembly activities at its plants in France and Spain for the next four days, as governments there implement new measures to restrict movements and fight the coronavirus outbreak, the planemaker said yesterday.
The move appears to mark the most serious across-the-board disruption in Airbus production since a strike at then British partner BAE Systems PLC in 1989, apart from problems with individual programs such as the Airbus A380 or A400M military aircraft.
“This will allow sufficient time to implement stringent health and safety conditions in terms of hygiene, cleaning and self-distancing, while improving the efficiency of operations under the new working conditions,” Airbus said in a statement.
Reuters on Monday reported that Airbus had drawn up contingency plans to slow or stop production if France was placed under a drastic lockdown due to the virus.
France’s aerospace capital of Toulouse is home to Airbus’ largest assembly plants as well its headquarters.
Factories in Britain, where Airbus makes wings, or Germany, where it has its second-largest cluster of assembly lines, could continue to operate for several days, but the rate at which they will produce parts and assemble jets has not been announced.
Deliveries have already been disrupted as crisis-hit airlines hold back from taking possession of aircraft to conserve cash, industry sources say.
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