The growth of French economic activity reached 0.2% in the first quarter of 2023, supported by the dynamism of industrial production and foreign trade, said Friday the National Institute of Statistics (INSEE). This first estimate of gross domestic product (GDP) is slightly higher than INSEE's forecast, which expected an increase of 0.1% over the first three months of the year.

Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire praised the "solidity" of the French economy, whose "fundamentals are holding firm". "Businesses continue to invest and create jobs, bringing 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 sharp decline in food, hit by double-digit inflation, the production of goods and services accelerated by 0.4%.

The not-so-impactful social movement

Manufacturing, in particular, was buoyant (+0.7%). Like energy production that benefited from the reopening of nuclear power plants, production rebounded in refineries, the strikes in March against the pension reform having been "less important" than those of October last year, detailed INSEE.

As a result of higher exports and lower imports, foreign trade contributed positively by 0.6 percentage points to GDP growth between January and March. INSEE also revised down by 0.1 point the growth figures for the third (0.1%) and fourth (0%) quarters of 2022 in France, without affecting the 2.6% increase in GDP recorded for the year as a whole.

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