AFP - France reported an improved trade deficit and rise in exports on Tuesday, but analysts said a fall in imports carried a threatening sting in the form of weak household spending.

The monthly trade deficit in January fell because of an increase of exports of manufactured goods, customs service data showed.

However, analysts said that although the figures showed that French trade was picking up, the recovery was far slower than the slump with the onset of the global economic crisis.

The finance ministry said that in January "exports of manufactured goods rose sharply because of a strong rise of sales in the sectors of aerospace, chemicals and pharmaceuticals."

Growth of imports was "more moderate" with the result that the monthly deficit had fallen by nearly 500 million euros from the figure in December.

In January, exports amounted to 30.176 billion euros and imports to 33.857 billion euros.

At consultants Asteres, Nicolas Bouzou said that exports had been driven largely by "very good sales of Airbus (airliners) and exports of vaccines." But exports of metals, vehicles and industrial machinery remained weak.

Bouzou said that the "moderate" rise of imports reflected weak internal demand in France, both in terms of investment by companies and consumption by households.

At consultants Xerfi, economist Alberto Balboni said: "French exports showed a third monthly increase in a row in January, to the highest level since July 2009."

This recovery was driven by "demand from emerging economies, notably in Asia, most of which have emerged from the crisis, while the industrialised countries are still suffering."

Balboni noted that household consumption was "the only real engine of growth (in France) in the last few years and is now in danger from the double effect of a rise of prices and of unemployment."

He said that a reduction of the trade deficit reflecting a slowing of household consumption "would be a very bad sign of the health of the French economy in 2010."

But on a positive note for the trade balance, the fall of the euro against the dollar "helps make French products more competitive in countries where demand is now the most dynamic" even though more than 60 percent of French exports go to the eurozone, he said.

Bouzou, noting that the euro has fallen recently by 10 percent against the dollar, said that such a fall raised French gross domestic product by at least 0.2 percentage points.

"It is just as effective as a plan to stimulate the economy and it costs public finances nothing."

The official data showed that the monthly deficit fell to 3.681 billion euros from 4.155 billion euros in December, and the balance for the last 12 months showed a cumulative deficit of 43.228 billion euros, or more than the deficit for the whole of 2009 of 43.03 billion euros.

France has structural trade and balance-of-payments deficits, which economists have said for many months reflect an underlying handicap in export competitiveness.

They attribute this largely to weakness in the number and specialisation of small and medium companies on export markets, compared notably with the performance of the other lynchpin economy in the eurozone, Germany.

Germany is the mainstay of eurozone economic power partly because it has a structural trade surplus.

The key driving force of growth in the French economy, by contrast, is domestic consumption.

In 2008, France reported a record trade deficit of 55.14 billion euros, owing in part to the onset of the economic crisis.