Prior 48.4Manufacturing PMI 49.9 vs 51.0 expectedPrior 51.2Composite PMI 49.9 vs 49.7 expectedPrior 49.1<\/p>\n
The French services sector bounced back to a two-month high, helping to shore up overall business activity in February. That as the manufacturing sector slips back into contraction, but just at the margin. Of note, new business inflows fell once again for a third straight month and at its quickest pace since July last year. That points to struggling demand conditions still plaguing the French economy in general. HCOB notes that:<\/p>\n
\u201cThe French private sector is still struggling to gain real momentum. Since last November, the HCOB Composite PMI has
\nbeen hovering around the 50.0\u2011point growth threshold, implying that any real progress remains absent. A prime example is
\nhiring activity, which stagnated in February. The main drag continues to come from the demand side as new orders declined
\nyet again, with the situation looking even worse for export orders.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the sector level, developments diverged at the start of the year as manufacturing gained some ground while services
\ncontracted. February was no different, as factory production growth contrasted with falling services output.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cBusiness expectations for the year ahead weakened somewhat, yet we remain cautiously optimistic given that the index
\nmeasuring corporate confidence is still higher than the 2025 average. Politically, agreement on the 2026 budget has brought
\nsome calm, but Macron’s succession is already casting its shadow. Despite the presidential election not being due until
\n2027, reports suggest Christine Lagarde’s possible early departure as head of the ECB is partly motivated by a desire to
\nallow Macron to choose her successor.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cPrice dynamics continue to move in different directions across sectors. Service providers granted price reductions to their
\ncustomers, whereas prices for manufactured goods picked up again after having fallen in the previous month. Corporate
\ncost pressures increased only moderately, and inflation remains clearly below the survey\u2019s long\u2011term average.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Prior 48.4Manufacturing PMI 49.9 vs 51.0 expectedPrior 51.2Composite PMI 49.9 vs 49.7 expectedPrior 49.1 The French services sector…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":96804,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[138,219,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-293444","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-economy","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293444\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}