French people invest more in foreign countries than the United States!

Christian Poujardieu, the president of the UIMM Côte d'Azur (Association of Industries and Carriers in Metallurgy) is concerned by these statistics, as he said during a recent meeting in Paris with the UIMM and the Medef. For the first time, in the year 2000, French people have invested more in foreign countries than Americans have. Thus, investment curves in foreign countries crossed each other. American investments in countries other than the United States have slightly decreased in 2000 beyond 150 billion dollars. However, French investments outside France have kept on increasing exponentially from 110 billion dollars in 1999 to more than 160 billion dollars in 2000! This increase is all the more spectacular that they reached less than 50 billion dollars in 1998 (Datastream statistics).

Some will conclude that it shows a conquering dynamism of the French industry. However, Christian Poujardieu fears that these statistics prove that the French territory is not attractive enough and that this "flight" of investments will directly threaten employment in France. All these figures should be at the heart of the debates at the first meeting of foreign investments in France, which will open on Wednesday at the Club Med of Opio.