The public banks restructuring cost, in terms of non-performing loans repurchased by the Treasury (excluding interests owed by the Treasury, materialized in bonds), accounted for 2.38% of GDP for the decade 1991–2000. For the same period, when including the amount of foreign exchange losses and interest rate spreads paid by the Treasury on account of public banks earlier external borrowing to support the balance of payments, the overall cost reached 3.26% of GDP. BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  Improvement in public finances during the 2000s enabled further restructuring of public banks’ balance sheets, with part of the NPLs consisting this time of bad loans to the private sector. For the period 2001–2010, repurchases by the Treasury through issuance of securities, essentially with regard NPLs to public enterprises, reached about 1.30% of the decade’s GDP. Finally, in 2011–2012, repurchase by the Treasury of loans to public and private enterprises accounted for 235.7 billion dinars, representing 0.77% of GDP. Along with NPLs repurchase operations, public banks received financial support from the Treasury to increase their equity capital. The overall amount in this regard reached 238.8 billion dinars, of which 107.7 billion dinars in cash and 131.1 billion dinars in equity securities. Part of these securities was subsequently repurchased by the Treasury, bringing their outstanding amount to 56.2 billion dinars by end 2010. It is worth noting that, during the 2000s, public banks provisioned significantly and benefitted from additional financial support from the Treasury to further increase their equity capital.

Bank of France reports industrial activity increased in all sectors in December 1996 BANK OF FRANCE, MONTHLY BUSINESS SURVEY, December 1996. In December, according to the business leaders surveyed by the Banque de France, industrial activity increased in all sectors, except in the intermediate goods sector, where it remained stable. The food processing and consumer goods sectors were the most buoyant. The capacity utilization rate remained virtually unchanged. Overall demand firmed on both the domestic market and the export market, where the strongest flow of orders continued to come from the United States and Asia. The competitiveness of French products was bolstered by the recovery of currencies that had weakened earlier, including the United States dollar, sterling and the Italian lira. Order books approached normal levels in all sectors, except in the intermediate goods sector, where they remained too low. Inventories decreased with the end of the lorry drivers’ strike, and now appear to be normal in the capital goods and automobile sectors. In the coming months, most sectors are expected to continue to show moderate growth. Commodity prices as a whole showed practically no change. Finished product prices held up overall, despite the continuing high level of competition. Investment programmes were limited to renewing obsolete equipment or to meeting the desire to increase firms’ productivity in an intensely competitive international environment. There were few plans for output capacity increases and in all cases were dependent on stronger growth in demand.