PARIS, June 11 (Reuters) - French Economy Minister Christine Lagarde said on Thursday she favoured publishing the results of bank "stress tests" when they are ready later this year but said she was confident that French banks were sound.
Lagarde told business daily Les Echos that European countries were discussing possible publication of the tests, which are aimed at verifying the state of readiness of banks to resist major shocks.
"In France, the most thoroughgoing test will be completed at the end of June and then there are also macro-economic tests conducted by European regulators which will be ready in each country in September," she said.
"As far as their publication is concerned, I'm personally in favour of it but I think a coordinated approach would make a lot of sense," she said in an interview to appear in Friday's edition that was released ahead of publication.
Stress tests of banks in the United States have been made public in a step widely seen as giving greater clarity to investors on the extent of underfunding that banks face.
But the results of tests carried out by individual countries in the EU have not been made public so far and there are no plans to reveal the results of a broader stress test by regulators now underway in the bloc.
German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck said this week he was opposed to publishing stress test results.
Lagarde said she was confident that French banks were generally well placed and said there was no question at the moment of setting up a special "bad bank" to handle toxic assets offloaded by banks.
"But obviously if the economic situation worsens, which I don't believe, they could have more depreciations," she said.
On the broader economy, she repeated that there were increasing signs that the economic downturn had slowed and that a recovery might be felt by mid-2010.
She said the billions of euros in stimulus measures pumped into the economy were beginning to bear fruit and said "we don't need to add fertiliser to the growth sprouting now."
But she ruled out any new taxes, saying the huge budget deficits built up in the spending spree would be brought down when growth resumed, even if it took some years. (Writing by James Mackenzie; Editing by James Dalgleish)