Julien Manceaux, senior economist at ING, points out that in France, industrial and manufacturing production increased for the third month in a row in February, confirming what recent activity indicators have been telling us: that a rebound is in the making in the first quarter.

“Manufacturing production rose by 1.1% month-on-month after a 0.7% increase in January. Even consumer goods production is slowly stabilising, with a much weaker contraction in February (-0.2% MoM vs -1.6% in January). These figures suggest that corporate investment was still dynamic in the first quarter while private consumption is recovering only slowly from a dip tied to the yellow vest crisis. As a whole, industrial production increased by 0.4%, weakened by the energy sector, and was up by 0.6% on the year in February. More importantly, 1Q19 should show the highest production growth figure since the end of 2017, confirming that the French economy is slowly exiting its soft patch since November.”