Emmanuel Macron is set to address the French people on Monday night after a fourth weekend of violence on the streets of major cities left the president under intense pressure to prove to protesters his government, accused of being arrogant and out of touch, is listening and to stop further unrest.

The president will speak at 8.00pm (1900 GMT), the Élysée office announced. It will be his first public comments after four weeks of nationwide anti-government demonstrations.

Government officials said the 40-year-old centrist would announce “immediate and concrete measures” to respond to protesters’ grievances. On Monday morning he met local and national political leaders, unions and business leaders to hear their concerns.

“It is clear that we underestimated people’s need to make themselves heard,” spokesman Benjamin Griveaux told Europe 1 radio.

As France cleaned up after another day of civil unrest sparked by the gilets jaunes movement against the rising cost of living, the country was counting the cost of what ministers described as a social and economic catastrophe.

On Monday France’s central bank halved its fourth-quarter growth forecast to just 0.2% from 0.4%, far below the 0.8% growth needed to meet the government’s full-year target of 1.7 percent.

“We can’t recover this,” the finance minister Bruno Le Maire said on RTL radio. “That’s the reality, for businesses, shop owners whose stores were damaged, vandalised or looted on Saturday.”

On Sunday, lorries towed away burned out cars and motorcycles, shops removed boardings from their windows and council workers cleaned up the detritus of rioting and looting.

A burned out newsstand in Paris on Sunday, the day after clashes during a national day of protest by the gilets jaunes. Photograph: Stéphane Mahé/Reuters

In Paris, which was worst hit, police had prevented a concentration of violence and destruction around the Champs Élysées, but in doing so dispersed pockets of protesters around the capital causing more widespread chaos and damage.

Much of the destruction was caused by gangs of “casseurs”, urban guerrillas determined to loot and pillage, some of whom were wearing gilets jaunes. Among the “yellow vest” protestors were black-clad and masked youths who, the authorities suggested, belonged to ultra-right, ultra-left, or anarchist groups.

A burned out car in Paris on Sunday. Photograph: Eric Feferberg/AFP/Getty Images

French security forces, using armoured vehicles and water cannon, were more mobile and reactive than in previous weeks, but Paris authorities said there had been “much more damage”.

“The sector concerned by the incidents was much larger. With fewer barricades, the protests were more dispersed so many more places were affected by the violence,” Emmanuel Gregoire, a Paris deputy mayor, told France Inter radio. “There was much more damage yesterday than there was a week ago.”

Violence also broke out at gilets jaunes demonstrations in Marseille, Bordeaux, Lyon, Nantes, Dijon and Toulouse during a fourth weekend of nationwide protests.

The gilets jaunes protests were sparked by an eco-tax on fuel due to come into effect in January and are named after the yellow high-visibility vests French motorists are obliged to carry in their vehicles in case of an emergency.

The government dropped the eco-tax last week, but the protest movement has ballooned into a more general protest against high taxes, the rising cost of living, poverty with the country’s leaders criticised as elitist, arrogant and out of touch.

The movement, which spread quickly on Facebook and social media, now appears to encompass what some are calling “real” gilets jaunes, “casseurs”, as well as fringe elements from the political extremes. Negotiating with the gilets jaunes has been hampered because there is no official organisation or leadership.

The ministry of the interior said 136,000 people took part in what the gilets jaunes had labelled “Act IV” of their campaign of action, a number similar to the previous week.

Police arrested 1,723 people, of whom 1,220 remained in custody overnight, 900 of them in Paris. This was more than four times as many as the previous week. Officials said 264 people were injured, including 39 police and gendarmes and several journalists. Many of the injuries were caused by the security forces firing flash-ball-style grenades at the crowds.

In Bordeaux, there were 44 arrests after violent clashes between police and demonstrators in which 26 people were injured, including a man who lost a hand after reportedly picking up a crowd control grenade to throw it back. Local prosecutor Olivier Etienne said the man was seriously injured.

In Toulouse, where protesters set fire to barricades and threw projectiles at the police, the authorities blamed several hundred “casseurs” for the violence.

Even those businesses that escaped damage were counting the cost of having to close on what would normally be one of the busiest shopping days of the year. On Saturday, Paris’s main department stores, Galeries Lafayette, Printemps and BHV turned off their Christmas lights, boarded up their seasonal window displays and shut up shop.

On Sunday, the French government also responded to tweets by Donald Trump apparently gloating over the violence in Paris and attacking the Paris agreement aimed at addressing climate change. “The Paris Agreement isn’t working out so well for Paris. Protests and riots all over France,” Trump wrote.

Speaking to French television, Jean-Yves Le Drian, the foreign and European affairs minister, bluntly told the American president to mind his own business. “We do not take domestic American politics into account and we want that to be reciprocated. I say this to Donald Trump and the French president says it too: leave our nation be,” he said.

Workers remove protective wood panels outside a store in central Paris on Sunday. Photograph: Stéphane Mahé/Reuters

France has also opened an inquiry into possible Russian interference in the gilets jaunes movement following reports that Moscow-based social media accounts have targeted protestors.

The Alliance for Security Democracy claims around 600 Twitter accounts known to promote Moscow’s views have begun using the hashtag #giletsjaunes. Le Drian confirmed an investigation was “underway” but added: “I will not comment before the investigation has reached conclusions.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday that any allegations that Russia helped whip up the protests were scandalous. “We have not interfered and will not interfere in the internal affairs of any countries, including France,” Peskov told reporters.