France cuts 2015 budget gap better than targeted: Insee

France lowered its budget deficit in 2015 to 3.5 percent of the national output, the smallest gap since 2008, data released by national statistics institute Insee showed on Friday.

Last year's deficit was better than the 3.8 percent the government pledged for last year. It reached 77.4 billion euros (about 87 billion U.S. dollars).

Under pressure to limit its public spending widely considered as the highest in the European bloc, the ruling Socialists squeezed expenditure to 56.8 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP), down from 57.3 percent in 2014, according to Insee report.

However, the country's gross debt hit a record 95.7 percent of the GDP in 2015, up from 95.3 percent recorded a year earlier.

"It's our fiscal seriousness that allowed us to achieve these good results. We will continue in 2016 and 2017 to reduce deficit while funding our priorities, lowering taxes and bolstering growth and employment," Finance Minister Michel Sapin said in a statement.

Having been blamed of failing to promote growth, bring down wide budget gap, and trim record high unemployment rate, French President Francois Hollande promised to put the country's finances in order by squeezing public spending and improving competitiveness to reach a deficit of 3.3 percent of GDP in 2016.

Hollande postpones to 2017 a reduction of budget deficit below 3 percent of GDP, the rate mandated by the EU to have healthy finances. (1 euro = 1.12 U.S. dollars) Endit