IMF supports pension reform

“Sustained spending-driven fiscal consolidation will be key to rebuilding financial buffers and returning debt to a firmly downward path,” the Washington institution wrote in a document released Monday assessing French economic policy.

According to the international organization, "the implementation of the unemployment insurance reform and the pension reform can offer part of this necessary adjustment".

Spending cuts and other reforms should also make this possible, the IMF judges in this document entitled Article IV.

The highly contested pension reform, which began to be examined Monday in the Social Affairs Committee of the National Assembly, provides for a decline in the legal age from 62 to 64 and an acceleration of the extension of the contribution period. , to the chagrin of the unions who are organizing a new day of mobilization on Tuesday.

The members of the Monetary Fund "welcome the recent adoption of the unemployment insurance reform and the upcoming pension reform, which will help to increase the labor supply", specifies the institution.

Already in November, the international economic institution had mentioned a reform of pensions as a way of reducing public spending, in the same way as the reduction of tax loopholes or better targeting of aid granted to households and businesses to cope with the energy crisis caused by the war in Ukraine.

On the aid provided in response to repeated crises, the IMF thinks that French support has "made it possible to cushion the impact but has been costly, poorly targeted, and a source of distortions" and always calls for more targeted measures towards the more vulnerable.

In November, he said he feared “a slight widening of the deficit” in 2023, citing the extension of energy measures and the continuation of the abolition of production taxes for companies.