|
|
  |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
French economic growth weakens
PARIS, France -- Growth in France continues to slow as the euro zone's second largest economy struggles to cope with falling investment, rising budget deficits and high unemployment. Gross domestic product expanded by just 0.2 percent in the third quarter, down from 0.4 percent growth in the previous quarter, the national statistics office INSEE said on Friday. The third-quarter number was below economists' forecast of 0.3 percent growth. INSEE said growth was hampered by a 0.9 percent decline in investment from the previous quarter, outweighing a 0.7 percent rise in consumer spending in the three months from July to September. "These figures are disappointing... You see that domestic demand is relatively weak. That's a bad sign," Stephanie Deo, an economist at UBS Warburg, told Reuters. France's economy -- which had been the best performer within the 12-nation zone -- is now lagging behind its biggest neighbours. Both the Germany and Italian economies expanded by 0.3 percent in the third quarter. Most economists expect French growth in 2002 as a whole will be less than 1 percent, below the government's official forecast of 1.2 percent. France is also facing a bulging budget deficit. The government said on Wednesday that overspending will rise to 2.8 percent of GDP this year, prompting the European Commission to issue an "early warning'' that France was close to breaching the euro zone's 3-percent ceiling on debt. However, Budget Minister Alain Lambert said the government was sticking to its forecast of a deficit of 2.6 percent in 2003. "We will do what is needed in 2003 so that there is no deterioration in the deficit voted by the National Assembly,'' he told reporters. Meanwhile, French industrial production fell 0.3 percent month-on-month in September, unemployment rose by 4,000 to 2.43 million in the same month, up 0.2 percent from August. The jobless rate was unchanged at 9 percent for the third straight month.
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
