2023-06-07 18:44:51
Relief on the foreign trade front. France’s trade deficit is stabilizing at a more acceptable level than last year.
It stood at 9.2 billion euros in April, a figure identical to that of March, revised down by 800 million euros, Customs said on Wednesday. Excluding energy, the trade deficit stagnated at 5 billion euros, after a quarter of improvement on this front.
This stabilization of the deficit comes after a continuous decline since August 2022, the month during which France recorded a record hole of nearly 16 billion euros.
The decline in imports was mainly fueled by the fall in energy imports, a decline fueled by the fall in volumes more than by a drop in energy prices, which remained relatively stable over the period.
On the export side, the increase came from investment goods and intermediate goods (100 million euros) but it failed to offset the decrease in energy exports in April (-400 million euros). euros).
The trade deficit remains at a historic level
Over the year, “the cumulative trade balance over 12 months is recovering and reached -155.9 billion euros”, continue the Customs. After recording a historic trade deficit in 2022 – 164 billion euros – a slight improvement can be observed.
However, these performances on the front of French foreign trade remain worrying, especially when compared to those of our European neighbours. This is notably due to the fact “that we tend in France to boost demand more than our neighbours, which maintains a vicious circle of deindustrialisation, analyzes Thomas Grjebine, economist at CEPII. The more a country is deindustrialized, the less its productive apparatus is able to respond to a revival of demand and the more this demand is aimed at imports, which reinforces deindustrialization. »
However, can we believe in an upturn? “We can think that there will be a reduction in the deficit of the balance of goods with the drop in the energy bill. But we still have a structural deficit in the balance of manufactured goods excluding energy. That’s the most worrying subject,” replies Thomas Grjebine.
France can nevertheless always congratulate itself on the performance of the services. Their surplus amounted to 4.2 billion euros, after 3.7 billion the previous month, according to the latest figures from the Banque de France published on Wednesday. This contributes to improving the balance of payments, a broader indicator than the trade balance. A balance of payments at near balance in April, as in March.
#Frances #trade #deficit #stabilizes