The French government wants all retail outlets other than restaurants and bars to be able to reopen once a nationwide lockdown is lifted on May 11, French Minister of Finance Bruno Le Maire said yesterday.
The government has said that not all businesses would be able to go back to work immediately once the lockdown, in place since the middle of last month to rein in the COVID-19 outbreak, ends.
“We want all retailers to be able to open on May 11 in the same way out of fairness,” Le Maire told France Info radio, adding that it remained to be seen whether that would be possible nationwide or only region by region.
“I would only set aside restaurants, bars and cafes,” he said.
The retail sector is among the hardest hit by the government-imposed closure of non-essential activities.
The lockdown is still cutting economic activity by 35 percent more than a month since it was imposed, despite a slight pick-up in the industrial and construction sectors, the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE) said.
Setting those two sectors aside, the INSEE estimate suggests that activity has yet to regain any momentum.
In the private sector and excluding rents, the loss of activity was as much as half of what it would be at normal levels, it said.
With the recovery likely to be gradual after the lockdown is lifted, the INSEE said that the impact was likely to be bigger than its previous estimate that each month of lockdown would reduce GDP by 3 percentage points.
The government has forecast that the eurozone’s second-biggest economy would contract 8 percent this year, which would be its worst recession since World War II.
Activity had picked up in the industrial and construction sectors after health protocols had been put in place allowing some factories and construction sites to resume work, INSEE said.
Separately, INSEE’s monthly survey showed that business confidence fell this month to the lowest level since records began in 1980, falling to 62 points from 94 last month.
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