France falls in economic ranking
President Hollande’s detractors criticise drop in world GDP table - but what has pushed Britain above France?
FRANCE has lost its place as the world’s fifth largest economic power.
A week after President Francois Hollande declared in his New Year’s Eve broadcast: “France is a great country. It is the world’s fifth economic power,” figures from the Centre for Economics and Business Research reveal the country has been overtaken by Britain.
Mr Hollande’s critics have leapt on the news, saying his advisers should have made him aware of France’s drop to sixth in the world table, something economists had known for some time, before he made his nine-minute address to the nation on December 31.
While the figures have yet to be formally confirmed, Mr Hollande’s detractors point to Britain’s stronger economic position, inflation and the strength of the pound compared to the euro as key reasons for its better Gross Domestic Product (GDP) figures for the year.
The British media, however, are playing down the news. Both The Telegraph and The Guardian point out that Britain’s slender advantage over France - as little as £1bn (€1.28bn), according to figures reported by both newspapers - is mostly as a result of differences in calculating GDP .
As reported, the European Commission said in June that it wanted illegal activities such as the drugs trade and prostitution to be included in GDP figures.
Britain includes these figures. According to official estimates, the illegal drugs trade contributed £6.62bn (€8.43bn) to the UK economy in 2013, while prostitution added £5.7bn (€7.2bn).
France’s national statistics office INSEE does not include figures for prostition or the drugs trade, because it does not consider them to be “voluntary commercial activities”.
According to the figures, America is the world largest economic power, followed by China, Japan and Germany, then Britain and France. Russia has fallen to 10th, on the back of the collapse of the ruble and the falling oil price, while Italy has moved up to eighth.
By 2025, forecasts suggest the global top five will be China, US, India, Japan and Brazil, with the UK in sixth, just ahead of Germany.
Photo: OliBac
