PARIS (Reuters) - The French government revised its public deficit targets for 2016 and 2017 slightly down on Thursday following extra savings announced for 2015 to respond to EU requests for more efforts.
Its budget deficit will drop to 3.6 percent of GDP in 2016 and 2.7 percent of GDP in 2017 after 4.1 percent in 2015 and 4.4 percent in 2014, the finance ministry said.
This is slightly better than the latest deficit targets of 3.8 percent of GDP in 2016 and 2.8 percent in 2017
But the deficits will still be way higher than President Francois Hollande's first forecasts. During his 2012 election campaign, Hollande had said the deficit would be brought down to 3 percent of GDP by end-2013 but France has since repeatedly pushed the target back.
The latest revision follows the extra 3.6 billion euros in savings announced in October to avoid EU sanctions.
(Reporting by Ingrid Melander and Jean-Baptiste Vey; Editing by Nick Vinocur)