* Budget deficit falls to 93.1 bln euros by end July
* Analysts say France may beat 2010 deficit target
By Vicky Buffery
PARIS, Sept 8 (Reuters) - A rise in tax receipts helped sharply narrow France's state deficit in the seven months to July, raising hopes the government could beat its 2010 public deficit target of 8 percent.
The budget ministry said on Wednesday the central government deficit dropped to 93.1 billion euros in July from 108.8 billion a year earlier.
Overall receipts jumped 19.4 percent year-on-year to 159.7 billion euros, while revenues from corporate tax leapt to 13.8 billion euros from 3.5 billion a year earlier, when the French economy was still struggling to emerge from its worst recession in post-war history.
"The central budget is on track to end the year with a much smaller deficit than originally expected. It is likely the government will reduce the general 2010 budget target when they present the 2011 budget later this month," said Dominique Barbet, chief economist at BNP Paribas.
The state deficit makes up most of the overall public deficit, which also includes social security spending shortfalls and expenditure by local authorities.
The government has so far said it expects the public deficit to hit a record 8.0 percent this year, and is due to present a draft budget later this month outlining how it plans to reduce the shortfall to 6.0 percent of GDP in 2011.
President Nicolas Sarkozy has committed to reducing the shortfall to the EU ceiling of 3.0 percent of GDP by 2013.
But BNP's Barbet said Wednesday's figures could make even his estimates of a public deficit of 7.8 percent of GDP this year look conservative, giving the government room to manoeuvre as it looks for savings to straighten out its finances.
"Tax receipts, and notably corporate tax but also VAT have been better than expected since the start of the year, and this month's figures once again confirm that trend," Barbet said.
Gilles Moec at Deutsche Bank confirmed that the central government deficit figures were encouraging and said the public shortfall could now be closer to 7 percent than 8 percent, putting the government on a more positive footing for 2011.
But he warned that the government's growth forecast of 2.0 percent for next year, which forms the basis of its deficit reduction plan, still appears optimistic.
In separate data on Wednesday, the customs office said France's trade deficit widened in July to 4.18 billion euros from a downwardly revised 3.718 billion euros in June.
The figure was only slightly ahead of a Reuters consensus forecast for a deficit of 4.0 billion euros.
Imports reached 37.858 billion euros in July, up from 36.755 in June, while exports hit their highest in nearly two years, reaching 33.678 billion compared with 33.037 billion a month earlier.
(For a table of data, double-click on
Separately, the Bank of France kept its third-quarter growth forecast unchanged at 0.3 percent and said its latest business survey showed industrial output remained stable in August and was likely to rebound in the months ahead. (Additional reporting by Daniel Flynn; Editing by )