France has slid into "technical recession" because it has gone through two consecutive quarters of negative growth, Budget Minister Eric Woerth said Friday, according to DPA. Woerth's comments confirmed a forecast issued earlier Friday by the government's statistical office Insee that, after shrinking by 0.3 per cent in the second quarter of this year, France's economy would continue to contract for the next two quarters. According to the forecast, France's GDP is to contract by 0.1 per cent in each of the last two quarters of 2008. "If the financial turbulence does not get worse," GDP growth for 2008 will be 0.9 per cent, Insee said in a statement. The French economy grew by 2.1 per cent last year and by 2.4 per cent in 2006. However, Woerth and other government officials insist that GDP for the year would be at least 1 per cent. Insee also said that unemployment in France would climb to 7.4 per cent by the end of the year, from the current 7.2 per cent.
