Overall Patterns

Empirical evidence on bilateral trade in non-factor services between ASEAN countries and France is less comprehensive than in the case of West Germany. The level of aggregation is higher, time series analyses are not possible as data were released for four years only, and finally, the explanations offered by the Banque de France on what should be subsumed under individual items leave some questions open. Again, however, shortcomings are systematic and thus do not impose barriers to analysing changes over time. Before highlighting a number of important findings on service trade from the 1975-87 period (Tables A13- A24), two preliminary statements are necessary with regard to the French engagement in trade and investment with ASEAN countries.

First, this engagement is sizeably lower than in the case of West Germany. This holds for trade as well as foreign direct investments. In 1987, French exports to ASEAN were only about half of West German ones, and by and large the same ratio applies to French imports as well. With respect to foreign direct investment, French investments again are much lower than those of West German firms, and this is witnessed by differences in the amounts of private capital outflows from the ASEAN countries to the two EC members (Tables Al 1 and A23). Measured in Deutschmark, capital income paid from ASEAN to France was less than half of that received by West Germany. Secondly, in terms of its service trade with developing countries, France is a very successful supplier of specific services, mainly in construction activities, infrastructure, engineering, and related consultancy work. By 1985/86, France was estimated to have received almost two-thirds of its total earnings from exports of services to developing countries from activities in the construction sector. Many of these countries belonged to the OPEC group (Langhammer 1989, p.256).