Bruno Le Maire wants to “continue to protect the French from inflation” in “the coming weeks and months”
The Minister of Economy, Finance and Industrial and Digital Sovereignty, Bruno Le Maire, insisted on Wednesday morning on BFM-TV that the government wants “continue to hedge against inflation” the French in “the next few weeks and months”. Mr. Le Maire estimated at the beginning of 2023 the beginning of the ebb of inflation and considered that the protection offered by the government, through aid, should be coupled with investments in education, hospitals and renewable energies. “We must restore public finances”also said Bruno Le Maire, while conceding the difficulty of combining these three objectives and criticizing the level of public spending envisaged by the New Popular Ecological and Social Union (Nupes).
The minister then detailed the future of the fuel discount introduced by the government: according to him, it must gradually change to “better cover those who have to use their car to go to work” and the “big wheels” as part of their duties – today, “It’s not necessarily fairer”considers Bruno Le Maire, the discount being offered without taking into account income or types of travel (personal or professional).
Regarding the idea of a food check, the principle of which was again rejected by the Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, on Tuesday, Bruno Le Maire repeated that the device was complex to implement. “Nobody today offered us a device that is immediately operational in the face of an inflationary peak that is now”he hammered, conceding that he did not know how to distribute a card allowing the purchase of only products from French production.
Continuing to mention the protection measures against inflation, Bruno Le Maire specified that it was possible for companies “viable” to use credit mediation to spread the repayment of state-guaranteed loans taken out since the start of the health crisis. The minister also said: “We are going to index the income tax scale to inflation, precisely to avoid these threshold effects, where people who would not pay income tax before, because of inflation, increases salaries, would switch to income tax or would switch to an additional bracket. »