France has posted its strongest growth in over 50 years, as the economy recovered from the economic shock of the pandemic. The French GDP expanded by 7% last year, data just released shows; the strongest annual expansion since 1969, as the economy showed resilience in the face of supply chain disruption.
It follows an 8% contraction in 2020 as lockdowns and restrictions to fight Covid-19 drove the economy into deep recession. French annual growth up to 2020 Photograph: World Bank
The strongest boom in a generation is a boost to Emmanuel Macron\u2019s economic credentials, ahead of April\u2019s presidential election in which he is widely expected to run for a second term.
France\u2019s economy grew by 0.7% in the last quarter, faster than expected, but slower than the 3.1% growth in July-September as the latest wave of infections hit Europe last autumn.
Consumers helped the recovery, with household spending rising by 0.4% in the quarter following the relaxation of restrictions earlier in 2021. Business investment, or gross fixed capital formation (GFCF), expanded by 0.5%, mainly lifted by spending on IT services
Statistics body INSEE says France\u2019s economy has now expanded \u2018significantly\u2019 past its pre-crisis levels, having returned to its pre-pandemic level of gross domestic product in Q3.
After returning to its pre-crisis level in the previous quarter (+0.2% compared to Q4 2019), GDP exceeded it significantly in Q4 (+0.9% compared to Q4 2019).
The Eurozone\u2019s two largest economies had a very different end to 2021, as the region\u2019s recovery from the pandemic continued. France beat forecasts with 0.7% growth in the last quarter, helping it rack up its best annual growth since 1969.
But Germany stumbled, with a 0.7% contraction in Q4 which puts it on the brink of recession, as the latest wave of Covid-19 and supply chain problems disrupted activity.
That took the shine off otherwise-decent economic numbers from the Eurozone, with Sweden and Spain also expanding solidly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
France has posted its strongest growth in over 50 years, as the economy recovered from the economic shock of the pandemic. The French GDP expanded by 7% last year, data just released shows; the strongest annual expansion since 1969, as the economy showed resilience in the face of supply chain disruption.It follows an 8% contraction …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":34708,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[7903,6837,6920,7696,7747],"class_list":["post-59246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-market-updates","tag-economic-growth","tag-eurozone","tag-france","tag-german-economy","tag-pandemic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59246"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59246\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59263,"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59246\/revisions\/59263"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}