I do everything to achieve the best resultsI did not come back I do not have the habit of winningDespite this setback the CEO of Airbus expressed confidenceIndeed this is done already from time to timeAttention however the stress test must be well doneToday the British market undertaking is expensiveHe had already been decided to add a family memberA very juicy system and obviously leads to swelling of the costsActions on a joint basis are frequently broughtTheir year end goal has also been revised 1The national Institute of statistics and economic studies (Insee) publishes this morning its forecast growth for the year 2006. The gross domestic product (GDP), bet, will grow 2 percent this year, more than last year ( 1.2), but in the low range of what provides the Department of Finance (from 2 to 2.5). Today, at the budget orientation debate and even more in the fall during the parliamentary discussion, economists and policy (and journalists...) will argue to the tenth of a point, the relevance of the forecast of growth that will support the 2007 budget.
The publication, a few weeks ago, by the Insee of the final accounts of the year 2003 shows yet that the GDP growth, become essential barometer of economic health, should be considered with greater caution. Over the statistical revisions of the Insee, growth was not limited, as believed in early 2004, 0.2, but eventually reached 1.1! A figure which remains poor and inadequate, but that largely changed, had it been known, comments. At the time, this underperformance placed the nearby France of the recession and part of 2003 as the "worst year since 1993. In the light of the latest revisions, the 2003 vintage was finally... better than 2002 ( 1). Jean-Pierre Raffarin, Prime Minister, could legitimately to feed some bitterness.
The last revision of the 2003 growth was "attributable", according to Insee, "a reassessment of the volume of household purchases, lined with a revised estimate of the value of indirectly measured (FISIM) intermediation services consumed by households". Details that show how national accounts is, first, a discipline of long time and the result of international conventions and technical effects the passage of the base 1995 to 2000, to mention only one outside in large part to the understanding of the citizen and its daily reality.
Therefore, should be to moderate the political overuse of growth. Each Prime Minister, each Minister of Finance has the ambition to be the one to come back and continue the growth. To the French, everyone is ready to talk about the figures beyond the reasonable. Recent illustrations in date, the Minister of employment, Jean-Louis Borloo, commenting on the employment figures at the most favourable sources (Unedic last week, Acoss the last few months), or that of finance, Thierry Breton, pushing detail to clarify the second digit after the decimal point ("0.54 ") of the growth in the first quarter. As noted in February (without language of wood and the National Assembly) the Budget Minister and Government spokesman, Jean-François Copé: "I am like all Ministers of the Budget, when the results are good, I makes them with pleasure;" When the results are less good, I read with caution.
This expedition to comment on their tendency and still little "stabilized" figures has yet only a very limited effectiveness: household morale rarely changes on the basis of a figure. Similarly, growth figures are hardly useful in the preparation of the budget of the nation: expenditures are now indexed on the inflation officially (the famous " 1 volume" this year); on revenue, they seem to increasingly more disconnected forecasts of activity, under the dual impact of technical measures (revenue anticipation, modernization of the collection...) and difficult to predict the behaviour of the agents (savers, consumers, companies...). Last year, tax revenue and exceeded expectations while growth has been less of a point in the forecast. This year, Jean-François Copé already anticipates a surplus of tax revenue.
Beyond this little effective sur-médiatisation, this is the meaning that is given to the figures provided by the national accounts with. "That is an accurate measure if what is measured is not meaning, or has a meaning of interest for users" wondered as well in a didactic book on accounting national economist and publisher Jean-Paul Piriou. GDP, despite its weaknesses, is the synthetic indicator par excellence, which allows international comparisons: the alternative measures are embryonic, and education efforts have their limits. Thierry Breton has well established a wider range of "indicators of progress of the French economy", but this palette of raw figures (forty!) hardly proved more explicit for the general public. The deeper problem is that welcoming all six months of the "return of growth" and the "recovery" Governments want to forget that the French economy is in fact structural weaknesses. Give meaning to growth could rather go through clear (and non-demagogic) objectives as denounced it the Court of Auditors to improve the prospects for growth in the medium term. A "potential growth" still officially established around 2.25, but that economists assess rather than 2 at most. It is, say Governments, the meaning of their economic policy, but the conditions for an increase of potential growth spend most often with little popular reform (pensions, productivity...) and long term, which is accommodated, in reality, with the imperatives of political life.