The number of foreign investment projects in France reached a 10-year high last year, the latest spot of encouraging news for French President Emmanuel Macron as he tries to make the country a more business-friendly destination.
The government’s Business France agency tallied 1,298 investment projects, including research facilities, factory openings and expansions, a 16 percent increase from 2016.
Among those were 412 companies that invested in the country for the first time, which Business France president Christophe Lecourtier said was a 20 percent increase from the previous year.
While investors from elsewhere in Europe were behind 58 percent of the projects, the report said US firms accounted for more of the jobs, retaking the top spot from Germany.
French Minister of the Economy and Finance Bruno le Maire, presenting the report at the offices of the US tech giant Cisco Systems Inc just outside Paris, said the increase was “the most concrete proof yet that France is back.”
“The strategy we have developed with the president of improving our attractiveness is the right one,” he said, vowing that the government would “do everything to bolster this dynamic.”
The French economy had already topped expectations with growth of 2 percent last year, well above the 1.5 percent most analysts had expected.
“We were surprised by the number of jobs created, and consumer spending was strong as well, as was investment,” said Jean-Louis Mourier, an economist at Aurel BGC, a brokerage firm in Paris.
The policy reforms introduced or promised by Macron since his election in May last year, including corporate tax cuts and eased labor rules, might be starting to pay off.
“They may have had an impact on confidence,” Mourier said. “It might have unlocked projects that were on hold.”
Britain’s looming exit from the EU next year is also prompting executives to turn their focus to France and its neighbors, with many banks already announcing plans to transfer operations.
Business France said the investments created or saved nearly 33,500 jobs, an increase of 11 percent on the previous year.
Half of the announcements tallied by Business France on Tuesday were for completely new projects while 42 percent would expand existing ones, with takeovers accounting for the rest.
Manufacturing accounted for the biggest chunk of the projects with 343, of which engineering made up a 10th.
By country, India represented one of the biggest increases, notching up a 73 percent rise in investment projects in France — notably the decision by IT giant Infosys Ltd to open a development center in the southern port city of Marseille.
However, the report did not include a count of how many foreign investors might have left France during the same period and did not put a euro value on the investments.
Consultancy Trendeo said the closure of 30 sites operated by foreign companies had been announced last year, but that figure was lower than the 37 registered in 2016.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to