France's trade gap narrows in June for less buying

Less purchasing abroad has made France record a smaller June trade deficit to 5.6 billion euros (7.9 billion U.S. dollars) despite of soaring energy prices and slack industry production, customs figures showed on Friday. After record high trade deficit in April and May, French export remained almost stable in June while import fell significantly due to less buying in energy product, oil and petroleum product in particular. The customs figures recorded 34.58-billion-euros foreign sales in June thanks to favorable performance in aeronautical and pharmaceutical sales and slightly better trade results within European Union, while the import cost fell to 40.173 billion euros versus 40.998 billion euros in May. French trade gap however for the first half of this year widened to 37.5 billion euros, up by nearly 10 billion euros from the second half of 2010, according to French customs data. Some local economist warned that France might see an annual trade deficit around 70 billion euros as its overall export value hadn't any remarkable improvement for the first six month of this year.