France, like the world, is not done with the crisis. Record inflation, shortages, soaring energy prices… Winter promises to be harsh, and the international climate is tense to say the least.
In this context, the OECD (the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development), whose mission is “to promote policies which will improve economic and social well-being throughout the world”, announces the organization’s website and published a report on Monday September 26, 2022, with the evocative name: “paying the price of war”.
She reports her forecasts, pessimistic, for the months to come and for the year 2023.
After eight months of war in Ukraine, a continuous surge in prices and serial shortages, the situation is far from being good, and 2022 will not have been a cakewalk for households and businesses. .
The OECD thus predicts global growth of 3% for the current year, a figure that is significantly reduced compared to the initial forecasts.
“Global GDP is currently projected to be at least USD 2.8 trillion lower in 2023 than forecast in December 2021, before the war in Ukraine. The costs related to this war are very diverse, but this amount gives an idea of its price at the world level in terms of economic production”, also notes the report of the organization.
In France, INSEE revised its growth forecast for 2022 by 0.3 points in early September: it now stands at 2.6%.
And bad news, according to the OECD: the nightmare is likely to last. In 2023, the organization forecasts global growth still falling, with global GDP increasing by only 2.2%, against 2.8% in the forecasts of last June… And for France, the figures are even more serious : the country’s growth should rise to just 0.6% next year.
In France, inflation has peaked since the beginning of the year. And it affects all sectors with more or less intensity: energy, food, transport, labor… So much so that households and businesses are struggling today to get by.
A situation that goes well beyond the initial objectives of the OECD.
“More than half of the products making up the price index are experiencing inflation above 4% in the UK, US and Eurozone, a sharp increase from a year ago with a higher level twice as high as the targets,” reads the report.
The organization also points to a “tight situation on the labor market, with unemployment rates reaching or approaching their lowest historical levels for 20 years”, and, consequently, purchasing power all the more in Bern… And which is not ready to increase, nowhere.
“Headline inflation is expected to peak this quarter in most major economies before declining in the last quarter of 2022 and throughout 2023 in the majority of G20 countries. That said, annual inflation will remain well above central bank targets almost everywhere in 2023.
In 2023, in the United Kingdom and Germany, inflation could exceed 8%.
In France, according to forecasts by OECD economists, the average price increase has already reached a “peak” in 2022, at 5.9%, and should fall slightly in 2023 to reach 5.77%.
In its report, the organization warns: “the decline in energy supplies from the European Union to Russia could ultimately generate much greater disruption than expected in the projections”.
And even if the government, for the time being, wants to be reassuring, should we really fear power cuts, or even a shortage of gas this winter?
According to OECD projections, it is from December 2022 that the situation risks being complicated if consumption does not decrease by 10%, with a “peak” of disturbances in March 2023.
“Shocks” which “could cut off growth in European economies” and tip many European countries into recession in 2023″, confirms the report.
To spend the winter, it will therefore be necessary to comply with the instructions of “energy sobriety” advocated by the Borne government in recent days.
Abundance seems, indeed, far behind us…
