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Agriculture
March 20, 2003

Farms: 730,000
Farmers/farm workers: 910,000
Utilized agricultural area: 30,139,000 hectares

Principal agricultural products in France:

  • Sugar beet: 1st in the EU, 2nd in the world (29 million tonnes)
  • Wine: 2nd in the world, 2nd in the EU (5.3 million tonnes)
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Industry
March 20, 2003

Leading industrial sectors in France :

  • Construction and civil engineering. Annual production : 797 billion francs ($159.4 billion). Four French groups (Bouygues, SGE, Eiffage and GTM-Entrepose) rank among the top ten in European construction, with an annual turnover of 158 billion francs ($31.6 billion).

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Research & Development
March 20, 2003

National R & D expenditure amounts to 190 billion francs ($38 billion) i.e. 2.5% of GDP.

The public sector finances 51% of it and is responsible for operating (building maintenance, salaries, laboratory equipment) the major national research centres, which include the CNRS (all fields), INSERM (medicine), INRA (agronomy), etc..

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Transportation
March 20, 2003

Road network
Densest in the world, longest in the EU with a total of 964,356 km of local, secondary and main roads and motorways, including 7,396 km of motorways (second in Europe).

Rail network
On 1 January 1996, the SNCF (National Railroad Company) was responsible for 31,940 km of track.

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Services
March 20, 2003

SERVICE SECTOR

Financial services
Market capitalization of shares listed on the Paris stock exchange totals 2,400 billion francs ($480 billion), 31.5% of French GDP, ranking Paris fifth in the world.

Four French banks are among the world’s top 25: Crédit Agricole (8th), Compagnie Financière Paribas (20th), Groupe Caisses d’Epargne (21st) and Banque Nationale de Paris (22nd).

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Foreign Trade
March 20, 2003

France is the world’s second largest exporter of services and farm products and fourth largest exporter of goods (principally durables); it had a trade surplus of 104.5 billion francs ($20.9 billion) in 1995. French exports stood at 1,427 billion francs ($285.4 billion) in 1995, 22% of GDP. Imports amounted to 1,322 billion francs ($264.4 billion).

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Introduction
February 28, 2003

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Prehistory
February 26, 2003

The first humans found in France, known as Homo Erectus, are believed to have lived around 950,000 B.C.

They evolved slowly, through four glaciations, discovered fire in the process (around 400,000 B.C.) to become Homo Sapiens. One of them, Cro-Magnon man, found in Dordogne (South West of France) in 1868 used to live circa 25,000. His physionomy differed only slightly from ours.
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Poll shows anti-war French 'like US'
February 25, 2003

PARIS, Feb 23 (AFP) – Seventy percent of the French say they like Americans but oppose a potential war in Iraq, while 15 percent are opposed to both Americans and the war, according to a poll to in Sunday’s Le Journal newspaper.

Six percent of those questioned said they “like Americans and are in favour of military strikes on Iraq” and 2 percent “don’t like Americans” but would favour military action in the country.

The poll questionned 965 people between February 20-21.

©AFP

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France Telecom cash call agreed
February 25, 2003

Shareholders in France Telecom have approved plans to raise up to 30bn euros to help the company deal with its crippling debt.

But chief executive Thierry Breton told the shareholders he would need only 15bn euros (£10.3bn; $16.2bn) to shore up the balance sheet.

At a meeting in Paris he said the company’s debt stood at nearly 70bn euros at the end of last year.

And he promised that profits would rise above 20bn euros by 2005 as the company tackled the debt mountain.

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