French industrial production fell by 0.9 percent in July from the June figure and manufactured output fell by 1.2 percent, according to figures released by France's national statistics institute INSEE on Friday.

These figures "are a bit surprising because they are lower than expected when we were anticipating a slight improvement," said Michel Devilliers, chief economist of INSEE.

He said the poor performance can be explained partially by the holiday of the French Bastille Day.

Alexandre Bourgeois of Natexis Banques Populaires (NBP) said "the most annoying is that all the sectors registered a fall."

"The fall concerns consumption (-0.4 percent), car industry (-0.6 percent), semi-finished goods (-0.2 percent), and agricultural and food industry (-0.2 percent). Only energy and construction have respectively an increase of 0.1 percent," he said.

French Finance Minister Thierry Breton has stressed recently that the French economy is heading for a period of growth in the second half of 2005.

"Prospects have clearly been positive since July," he said at the end of last month.

Source: Xinhua