- International Monetary Fund
France, the Euro zone's second largest economy, is recovering but its growth potential is still much weaker than before the crisis, the International Monetary Policy said. According to the think-tank, France's main hurdles lie in record levels of public spending and public debt, as well as stubbornly high jobless rate. The unemployment rate was at 10.6% in March. Without further structural reforms, the jobless rate in France was "likely to decline only very slowly." The IMF predicts that the French economy will grow 1.2% this year, above the government's estimates, after almost four years of near-stagnation.
Meanwhile, Greece's government parliamentary speaker Nikos Filis said that the country will not be able to make repayment to the International Monetary Fund due on June 5 without an agreement with its international creditors. Athens faces several payments worth around 1.5 billion euros to the IMF next month and is in negotiations with the European Union and the IMF to strike a cash-for-reforms deal before it runs out of money. At the same time, in Germany, producer price index rose less-than-expected in April. According to a report from Destatis, German Producer Price Inflation climbed to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 0.1%, from 0.1% in the preceding month. Analysts, however, had expected a 0.2% rise.
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