French trade deficit reaches record high for 2011

In an interview with French daily Le Figaro, junior minister for trade Pierre Lellouche defended the figure saying it was better than the original estimate of 75 billion euros announced in January.

In 2011, France's imports rose by 11 per cent to 498 billion euros while exports rose by 8.6 per cent to 429 billion euros, allowing for the creation of 90,000 new jobs, Lellouche told the newspaper.

"We can be satisfied at the good results in certain sectors, the agro-food sector saw a historic surplus of 11.4 billion euros. Aeronautics also saw a surplus, of 17.7 billion, thanks to the sale of 534 Airbus planes," he said.

Dossier: Eurozone in crisis

However French exports rose less last year than in Germany, Britain, Spain, Italy or the United States. And France's global trade share has fallen sharply since 1990 from 6.2 per cent to 3.6 per cent.

Elsewhere in the eurozone, Greece was in the grip of a 24-hour general strike on Tuesday called by the country's biggest unions to fight a new wave of austerity measures being negotiated with the EU and IMF.

The strike was called by Greece's biggest unions, including the private sector GSEE and the civil servants' union, Adedy.

There was only a skeleton service operating in schools, ministries, hospitals and banks while commuters using buses and metros faced major delays in Athens. Air travel was expected to remain unaffected however.

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Lucas Papademos is to meet the heads of the socialist, conservative and far-right parties that form his unwieldy coalition and reach agreement on budget cuts demanded by Greece's creditors.

Papademos, who is being pulled one way by his EU partners and the other by domestic sentiment, met officials from the EU, European Central Bank and IMF again on Monday evening.

Those talks were aimed at wrapping up weeks of negotiations and saving his country from a historic default in March that could roil the 17-nation eurozone and undercut a global economic recovery.