French current account deficit widens

France sustained a pronounced expansion in its current account deficit in February when the shortfall corrected for seasonal variations came to 3.355 billion euros (4.14 billion dollars) after 362 million euros a year earlier, the finance ministry reported Wednesday.
But compared with January the corrected current account deficit shrank from 3.633 billion euros. In the first two months of the year, the uncorrected deficit came to 4.0 billion euros against 3.4 billion in the same period of 2005.
The merchandise trade component of the account ran up a corrected deficit of 1.9 billion euros in February, against a deficit of 2.7 billion in January.
The services sector recorded a deficit of 0.3 billion euros after 0.07 billion in January.