In the long interview he gave to L’Express, Emmanuel Macron returns to one of the paradoxes that the country is currently experiencing in terms of reindustrialization, this issue which he has made the “mother of battles”. Since he came to power in 2017, 130,000 additional jobs have been added to the ranks of the industry. But the manufacturing production index or the share of industry in GDP has not increased over the same period. In short, the French factory does not produce more than before… with more hands.
The President of the Republic puts forward two explanations for this phenomenon. According to him, “we are not yet out of Covid and many production lines are not running at the same pace as before the pandemic. The reorganization of these lines is underway.” This productivity at half mast is also due, believes the Head of State, “to the singularities of our economy. By increasing the return to employment, we bring back people who have less productivity, that is a fact. France was once one of the most productive countries in the world, because it was one of those with one of the lowest activity rates and the highest unemployment. In other words, as far fewer French people were working and they were. worked less hours, production per capita was much higher and, as activity increases and unemployment falls, our productivity normalizes Statistically, the more we will return to work – in industry, services. or agriculture – people who were far from employment, the more we will have degraded productivity for a time.” And to conclude: “It doesn’t matter, I’m not obsessed with it.”
The imperative of robotization
Economist at the Rexecode institute, Anthony Morlet-Lavidalie is more circumspect about this astonishing gap between employment and production: “Producing without added value is not viable in the medium or long term. Either the activity takes off and the managers The company was right to be patient and keep their workforce: it’s the exit at the top or the orders don’t come back, and they will be forced to lay off workers in the coming months, it’s the exit at the top. the bottom.”
The other lever to improve productivity would consist of further automating production lines. “We were the country in Europe most hostile to robotization, recalls Emmanuel Macron. However, in a country where, given the social model, work has a certain cost, you cannot reindustrialize if you do not robotize. We made up for this delay by massively robotizing thanks to the recovery plan and the France 2030 plan.” There is still a long way to go: according to figures published by the International Federation of Robotics, France has installed 7,000 industrial robots in 2022, compared to 12,000 for Italy, 26,000 for Germany, 40,000 for United States… and 290,000 for China!
However, insists Anthony Morlet-Lavidalie, it would be wrong to think that French companies are not playing the game: “The bulk of French growth in recent quarters is linked to their investment dynamic. Since the end of Covid, they are extremely resilient on this point, like their counterparts in the United States, while German companies have rather stalled.” The windfall of 15 billion euros in investments, mainly foreign, announced on May 13 during the last Choose France summit is therefore only the tree that hides the forest.
“Promote the productive site France”
Emmanuel Macron felt that the spotlight on Microsoft, Amazon and other IBMs was beginning to irritate a certain number of French bosses who, in the shadows, spare no effort to grow and develop in France. “We are going to organize a Choose France summit dedicated to French companies, confided the President of the Republic to L’Express. To respond to their wishes and to better promote this choice of the France productive site by French actors, let it be be SMEs or large groups.”
“This announcement is good news,” says Gilles Attaf, president of Origine France Garantie and founder of the FFI, the French Forces of Industry, a collective of SME and ETI managers who defend “Made in France”. On June 18, a very symbolic date, the FFI will launch an appeal for French savings with the creation of a new investment fund, FFI Croissance, guaranteed by Bpifrance and promoted by the private management group Crystal Finance. His vocation? Direct household money towards financing regional SMEs. A promising initiative, which echoes this distressing observation made by the Head of State: “Each year, 300 billion euros saved by Europeans finance the American economy in stocks or bonds, it is an aberration. “
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