France will keep its next year's growth target despite mounting fears of global economic recession, French Finance Minister said Tuesday.

Paris would stick to its 1 percent growth target in 2012 without presenting new package of austerity measures to trim public gap, Francois Baroin said in an interview with France Info radio.

"We have 2012 budget which allows us, despite an economic slowdown, to have a margin of 6 billion euros (7.99 billion U.S. dollars) to face any eventual recession," the minister said. "Regardless changes of the economy in the coming weeks, we maintain our forecast."

In a context of global recession, France, the eurozone's second largest economy, had set its 2012 growth target at 1 percent down from a previous estimation of 1.75 percent.

Xinhua