French government announced on Wednesday it planned to further squeeze public spending by 14 billion euros (18 billion U.S. dollars) next year and to raise tax by 6 billion euros to get its public deficit under the EU limit of 3 percent of output by 2014.

In its newly released stability plan, the government said it would focus "on the adjustment of public expenditure savings in 2014, (which is) a fair and effective strategy" to trim the country's public deficit to 2.9 percent in 2014 from a forecasted 3.7 percent this year.

The government has made a "realistic" growth forecast of 0.1 percent this year, 1.2 percent in 2014 and 2.0 percent annually between 2015 and 2017.

However, in the view of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the picture of the French economy is not rosy after its report, released on Tuesday, pointed to a 0.1-percent contraction this year before a 0.9-percent recovery in 2014. (1 euro = 1.31 U.S. dollars) Endi

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