Growth in French economic activity reached 0.2% in the first quarter of 2023, supported by the dynamism of industrial production and foreign trade, the National Institute of Statistics (Insee) said on Friday. This first estimate of gross domestic product (GDP) is slightly higher than INSEE’s forecast, which forecast an increase of 0.1% over the first three months of the year.
The Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, hailed the “solidity” of the French economy, whose “fundamentals are holding up”. “Companies continue to invest and create jobs, which brings us closer to our goal of full employment,” he added. While household consumption of goods fell by 0.2% in the first quarter with a marked decline in food, hit by double-digit inflation, production of goods and services accelerated by 0.4% .
The social movement not so impactful
The manufacturing industry, above all, showed dynamism (+0.7%). Like energy production which benefited from the reopening of nuclear power plants, output rebounded at refineries, with strikes in March against the pension reform having been “smaller” than those in October last year, detailed Insee.
Due to an increase in exports and a decline in imports, foreign trade contributed positively, by 0.6 percentage point, to GDP growth between January and March. INSEE has also revised down the growth figures for the third (0.1%) and fourth (0%) quarters of 2022 in France by 0.1 point, without this affecting the increase in GDP. 2.6% recorded for the year as a whole.