France's economy stagnated in the first three months of 2014, and recent business surveys have suggested private sector activity has shrunk in the last quarter.
And inequality has declined, and the share of public sector activity has gone up, as the financial sector has gone down.
For the whole water sector, many foresight activities have been carried out [13, 20] and water issues are also included in some general foresight projects [21].
Since the 1990s, the growth of information technology (IT), IT-enabled services (ITES), insurance and financial institutions has expanded the service sector, and these primary economic activities have boosted the ancillary sectors of trade and commerce, transport, storage, communication, real estate and retail.
Foxconn is China's largest private-sector employer, and its activities have turned the coastal town of Shenzhen into the electronics workshop of the world.
While in the 1950s agriculture and industry were the dominant sectors, tertiary (largely service and administrative) activities have since become the principal employer and generator of national wealth.
These activities have been especially common in the oil and gas sector.
The privatization of mines, which is nearly complete, has improved efficiency and output so much that employment in that sector and related activities has increased to more than 60,000 today from 42,000 in 1993.
Over all, agents say, the changes could give a welcome fillip to the high-end real estate sector, where activity has been steady this year even though demand from traditional buyers in Europe has been held back by economic concerns.
