PARIS (Reuters) - The French government published on Wednesday a draft mini-budget with an extra 4 billion euros (3.23 billion pounds)in public spending cuts and tax relief for nearly 4 million households as Paris tries to meet deficit targets while assuaging concerns of angry voters.
The supplementary 2014 budget is the first leg of a widely announced move that will be completed on June 18 by another draft bill to cut payroll tax by 30 billion euros over the next three years.
The aim is to keep France on track with its plan to bring its public deficit down to 3.8 percent of GDP this year and 3 percent next year. The European Commission warned this month it considered France's forecasts were too optimistic and that it needed to do more to meet EU deadlines in 2015.
The 4 billion euros in extra public spending savings this year include over one billion euros of savings in healthcare and welfare spending, plus 1.6 billion euros shaved from spending across government ministries.
Some 3.7 million households will benefit from tax relief measures at a total cost of 1.1 billion euros for the budget.
The draft budget also takes into account France's lower borrowing costs, with an estimated saving of 1.8 billion euros on that front.
The government maintained its forecast of 1 percent growth this year.
In order to give businesses the visibility they were asking for, the government will include in next week's bill the payroll tax cuts planned for next year.
The central government component of the total public deficit will be higher than initially planned in the 2014 budget law when it was adopted last year - 83.9 billion euros versus an initial 82.6 billion euro estimate - because of tax intakes seen 5.3 billion euros lower.
But the difference had already been taken into account in the new multi-year budget plan the government tabled in April, officials said, with the overall public deficit ratio remaining unchanged from April's target of 3.8 percent of GDP for 2014.
(Reporting by Ingrid Melander and Jean-Baptiste Vey; editing by Mark John)