The French government's million-billion loan muddle

It's an easy enough mistake perhaps getting a few zeros confused especially when the amounts involved are to most of us pretty mind boggling.

But it's not really the sort of error you would expect from a government purportedly more adept at matters financial and charged with balancing the nation's books.

That however, is exactly what the French government has been up to recently, proudly outlining on its official site how the planned €35 billion loan, announced by the president, Nicolas Sarkozy, earlier in the month "to boost the country's competitiveness and fund the best universities in the world" would be spent.

On Christmas Eve it went online with a breakdown of how the money would be apportioned to each of the main sectors such as universities, small businesses, sustainable development and the digital economy that would spearhead Sarkozy's plan to ensure that France could "fully benefit from the recovery, so that it would be stronger, more competitive, and create more jobs."

Except someone clearly got in rather a muddle as to the number of zeros involved, or simply repeatedly hit the wrong letter on the keyboard (after all it can easily happen to those unfamiliar with the French AZERTY layout) because the 35 billion suddenly became a rather more modest 35 million.

And there the blunder remained for all to see until the afternoon of December 29 when the figures were corrected.




For those who might have missed what was - as the government's press service assured - "a mistake" - the national daily Le Figaro helpfully published a screen shot of the "million-billion" mix-up.

Perhaps it was the timing of the release that left the rather embarrassing miscalculation in the public domain for four days.

After all who in their right mind would take a break from the Christmas festivities to take a glance at what was on the government's website?

But of course it's not the first time the French government has had problems with the flow of information making it on to its own site.

Back in August it published the names of Frédéric Lefebvre, Axel Poniatowski and Paul Giaccobi as three new junior minister appointed to the government, before quickly taking them down again the same afternoon in what initially described as a "technical problem" and was later explained as "human error".