Passage: The national statistics institute INSEE said Tuesday that the French economy should expand by 2.1 percent this year, thanks to a rebound in the fourth quarter, and appeared likely to resist a slowdown in global momentum expected in early 2007. INSEE economist Eric Dubois said the stagnation in the French economy in the third quarter was a surprise and should be corrected by growth of 0.9 percent in the final three months of the year, powered by a pickup in the manufacturing industry.
stagnation