FRANCE: 4 BILLION EUROS OF FOREIGN INVESTMENT AND 10,000 JOBS ANNOUNCED MONDAY, SAYS THE ÉLYSÉE
PARIS (Reuters) – France will announce on Monday 21 investment projects by foreign companies in France, representing a total amount of four billion euros and 10,000 job creations, particularly in the chemical industry, health and food industry, it was said on Sunday at the Elysée.
These announcements will be presented as proof of the positive impact of Emmanuel Macron’s economic policy on the country’s competitiveness, less than three months before the first round of the presidential election.
The President of the Republic will unveil two of these projects himself: a molecular recycling plant by the American chemist Eastman, worth 850 million euros, allowing the creation of 350 jobs on a site whose location is still subject of discussion, and an HMD plant – a precursor to plastics – by the German chemist BASF, which will be presented during a trip by Emmanuel Macron to the Haut-Rhin, representing 300 million euros of investment and the creation of 60 jobs.
Six ministers will travel in parallel throughout France to present other projects among the 21, such as the relocation of a semiconductor activity of the Belgian X-Fab in Essonne for 60 million euros, or to make the update on projects already announced.
Since coming to power in 2017, Emmanuel Macron has introduced a series of reforms to reduce the tax burden on businesses and make the labor market more flexible, a policy that has earned him the label “president of the rich”. “.
“As you can see, there is still very strong foreign investor confidence,” a presidential adviser said. “Even three months before the election, we could have expected, as usual in previous five-year terms, a little wait-and-see attitude (…) There, on the contrary, we see very strong investor confidence foreigners in the politics of the President.”
Monday’s announcements support the scenario of a stronger-than-expected recovery of the French economy post-Covid, with an estimate now raised to +6.7% in 2021, to a level closer to the level before the Covid-19 pandemic. pandemic than all other G7 countries except the United States.
(Michel Rose, with Gilles Guillaume, edited by Camille Raynaud)