PARIS, Feb. 8 (Xinhua) -- France's central bank, Banque de France (BdF) on Friday expected the country's economy to grow by 0.1 percent for the January-March period this year on expected improvement of industrial and services businesses.
In its monthly economic report, the bank showed that a slowdown in automotive industry pulled down the country's industry business with the capacity unilisation rate losing 0.9 percentage point to 75.2 percent.
After witnessing a significant rise in December, total orders declined sharply in January despite fairly strong foreign orders, according to BdF.
However, in the short term, the bank expected a slight increase in the industrial activity.
As to services, slowing growth of temporary work, accommodation and food services and household services drove down the sector but a recovery was forecasted in February.
The business sentiment indicator in industry gained one point to 95 while that of services was stable at 90.
In 2013, the Socialists expect the French economy to bounce back with the help of government packages worth 37 billion euros (49.63 billion U.S. dollars).
They hoped GDP would rise to 0.8 percent from an expected 0.3 percent in 2012 and public deficit lowered by 1.5 percentage points to 3 percent of GDP. (1 euro = 1.341 U.S. dollar)
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