France cut a crippling trade deficit by nearly nine percent last year partly due to falling imports, official data showed on Friday in figures that contrasted starkly with a record surplus in Germany.
A trade surplus is a vital factor of growth in an economy, but France has developed a chronic structural deficit in recent years.
Correcting this is a top priority for the Socialist-Green government, which is moving towards reducing charges on companies and cutting deeply into public spending to contain the overall tax burden.
The latest data for France, the second-biggest eurozone economy, showed that in 2013 the trade deficit fell by 6.0 billion euros to 61.2 billion euros ($83.2 billion), Trade Minister Nicole Bricq said.
By contrast, Germany, Europe's largest economy, achieved a trade surplus of 198.9 billion euros in 2013, the highest since foreign trade data have been compiled.
In 2012, the German surplus had stood at 189.8 billion euros.
In France, exports fell by 1.3 percent last year against a background of weakness in the world economy including a slowing of growth in emerging markets.
But imports fell by a higher 2.3 percent.
Without exports booked by the aerospace sector, the deficit would have been far higher.
French aerospace exports are largely in the form of exports of Airbus airliners which are assembled in several European Union countries with parts from inside and outside the EU but which figure as finished products in the French national trade accounts.
This sector contributed a record net export surplus of 22.0 billion euros.
The two other sectors making a big contribution to the improvement were the agricultural and food, and pharmaceutical industries.
The agriculture-food sector raised its export contribution by 3.3 percent to to 11.5 billion euros, and exports by the pharmaceutical industry showed record growth of 2.5 percent.
French ministers and industrialists often complain that the strength of the euro, which reflects in part the strength of the German economy, is a handicap for French exporters.
Exports to Asia showed the biggest fall, of 3.5 percent.
However, the data showed that exports to the United States continued to grow, by 1.5 percent whereas they fell by 0.7 percent to other countries in the European Union, which includes countries outside the eurozone such as Britain.
The minister said that 2014 was a "turning point", a year of "recovery and rebound".
"After a difficult year in 2013, the economic lights are turning to green, particularly in the eurozone where we do 47 percent of our trade," she said.
hollywoodtone.blogspot.com France 'cuts huge trade deficit in 2013': minister