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French Foreign Trade Minister Olivier Pechet announced during a press conference that his country’s trade deficit doubled in 2022 to reach 164 billion euros, compared to the previous record of 84.7 billion recorded in 2021. The minister considered that this was due to the exorbitant cost of energy due to the rise in prices due to The war in Ukraine and the unrest in the French nuclear sector forced Paris to import electricity.
For the second year in a row, the French trade balance has historically declined in 2022, exceeding record deficit He scored it in 2021, and this decline was affected by prices energy Meanwhile, services recorded an unprecedented surplus thanks to the tourism and transportation sectors.
“Unfortunately, we are continuing with the approach of the past years,” French Foreign Trade Minister Olivier Bisht said during a press conference, during which he offered to double the trade deficit to 164 billion euros, compared to a previous record of 84.7 billion in 2021.
France has been recording a chronic trade deficit for twenty years with the rest of the world, and the last trade surplus dates back to 2002, according to figures from the National Institute of Statistics and International Studies.
“It’s the big decline in the trade balance everywhere,” he added, noting that energy has affected the accounts of many neighboring countries in Europe.
Germany’s trade surplus fell last year by 56% due to the cost of energy-related imports.
In Japan, between the rise in the price of fuel and the depreciation of the yen, the trade deficit reached 19,971.3 billion yen (about 144 billion euros at current prices) in 2022, surpassing the previous record of 2014.
For France, Bisht acknowledged recording a “very large deficit” last year, stressing, in turn, the record surplus recorded in the services sector.
The reason, he said, is due to the high cost of energy due to the rise in prices as a result of the war in Ukraine and the unrest in the French nuclear sector, which forced Paris to import electricity.
Thus, energy import prices doubled by 2.1 compared to the previous year.
France 24/AFP
