{"id":429784,"date":"2026-04-23T14:40:05","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T07:40:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/market-news\/2026\/04\/france-april-flash-services-pmi-46-5-vs-48-5-expected\/"},"modified":"2026-04-23T14:40:05","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T07:40:05","slug":"france-april-flash-services-pmi-46-5-vs-48-5-expected","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/market-news\/2026\/04\/france-april-flash-services-pmi-46-5-vs-48-5-expected\/","title":{"rendered":"France April flash services PMI 46.5 vs 48.5 expected"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<ul>\n<li>Prior 48.8<\/li>\n<li>Manufacturing PMI 52.8 vs 49.5 expected<\/li>\n<li>Prior 50.0<\/li>\n<li>Composite PMI 47.6 vs 48.6 expected<\/li>\n<li>Prior 48.8<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p class=\"text-align-justify\">French economic activity is seen contracting at its quickest pace in 14 months as the fallout from the Middle East conflict continues to bite at Europe&#8217;s second largest economy. That comes despite some positive news from the industrial side of things, with stronger factory output growth recorded for the month.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text-align-justify\">That being said, the jump in factory order books owes much to some frontloading activity. It is the first time in nearly four years that the order book expanded but it is mostly due to clients bringing forward purchases ahead of expected shortages and price increases as supply issues arise from the Strait of Hormuz closure.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text-align-justify\">To nobody&#8217;s surprise, input price inflation continued to surge higher in April &#8211; rising to a three-year high. A mix of higher costs for energy,<br \/>\nfuel, transportation, chemicals and metals were commonly<br \/>\nmentioned by panellists. So, just be mindful of that as it will eventually reverberate to all other aspects of the economy in due time.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text-align-justify\">HCOB notes that:<\/p>\n<p class=\"text-align-justify\">&#8220;There is a lot to unpack in the latest &#8216;flash&#8217; PMI data<br \/>\nfor France. The service economy has deteriorated<br \/>\ndue to a diminishing willingness to spend \u2013 a typical<br \/>\nconsequence of uncertainty \u2013 pulling overall business<br \/>\nactivity levels lower. Preventing the headline &#8216;flash&#8217;<br \/>\nindex from falling even further below 50.0 was the<br \/>\nmanufacturing sector, which saw a production rebound<br \/>\nin April. However, this does not look like a turning point<br \/>\nand will likely be temporary, as our survey respondents<br \/>\nreported advance purchasing from customers in<br \/>\nanticipation of price increases, shortages and logistics<br \/>\nissues.\n<\/p>\n<p class=\"text-align-justify\">&#8220;Unsurprisingly, manufacturing inflation moved even<br \/>\nhigher in April as a range of raw material costs rose,<br \/>\ntransportation became more expensive and supply<br \/>\nbottlenecks pushed up prices. Services companies are<br \/>\nalso feeling the pressure from higher transportation<br \/>\ncosts. What&#8217;s most notable is that the passthrough<br \/>\nto prices charged for goods and services remains<br \/>\ncontained. Services charges have barely moved since<br \/>\nthe outbreak of the war, which will be a welcome sight<br \/>\nfor policymakers in the European Central Bank. How<br \/>\nlong this continues remains to be seen, however, given<br \/>\nthe strain that corporate margins will be feeling.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>                            This article was written by Justin Low at investinglive.com.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Prior 48.8 Manufacturing PMI 52.8 vs 49.5 expected Prior 50.0 Composite PMI 47.6 vs 48.6 expected Prior 48.8 French economic activity is seen contracting at its quickest pace in 14 months as the fallout from the Middle East conflict continues to bite at Europe&#8217;s second largest economy. That comes despite some positive news from the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":216,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-429784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-market-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/216"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=429784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429784\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=429784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=429784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=429784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}