MANY of the French government's measures, announced yesterday, for revitalising the economy, are less about significant new initiatives and more about fine tuning existing ideas, which will involve considerable questions of interpretation. The reforms, finalised late on Monday night, were made public in a relatively low key way.
It was Mr Jean Arthuis, the Economics and Finance Minister, who unveiled the details rather than Mr Alain Juppe, the Prime Minister, who spoke about them on television later.
Perhaps one of the most important measures was not part of the package at all. Mr Arthuis stressed that the government was determined to remain within "a few billion" francs of its 322 billion francs (£42 billion) budget deficit target get for 1995, and within the envelope" voted by the French parliament for 1996.
To help achieve this in the light of slowing economic growth and falling tax revenues during the current year, he said, an extra 20 billion francs in credits allocated in the 1996 budget would be frozen.
A second notable result of negotiations held over the past few days ahead of publication of the details of the measures was a reduction announced yesterday afternoon by the country's leading commercial banks to lower their base rates.
From the start of February they will come down by 0.5 per cent to 7 per cent, a move which should substantially reduce financing costs and could help boost consumption and industrial investment.
The key tax free Livret A, the national savings interest rate, is to be reduced from 4.5 per cent to 3.5 per cent, a risky action since some 80 per cent of French households have these accounts. The last cut in 1986 provoked a sharp fall in the government's popularity.
Among the other ideas announced to help boost consumption was a 25 per cent tax deduction for the first two years available on loans taken out to buy consumer goods.
The markets' reaction to the French measures appeared positive, with the CAC 40 index of leading quoted company shares closing up 1.13 per cent at the end of the day.
