The need to increase the productivity of enterprises, improve professional training, and organize markets was strongly emphasized. Global objectives were established: national output was expected to grow by 25 percent and industrial production by 30 percent. These targets were surpassed. Between 1952 and 1957 the national product increased by 30 percent, while industrial production rose by 46 percent. Agricultural production lagged behind because of the poor harvests of 1956. It increased by only about 7 percent when the plan had anticipated growth of 20 percent.
Investment targets were exceeded on average by around 10 percent, although the development of capital goods industries was slower than that of consumer goods industries. The difficulties encountered during the Second Plan were mainly related to inflation and to the serious imbalance in external payments during 1956 and 1957. Rapid economic growth was therefore achieved partly at the cost of strong inflationary pressures.
For several reasons linked to economic stabilization policies and to the international economic situation, the years 1958 and 1959 were marked by recession and by a return to economic balance. The Third Plan (1958–1961) was therefore prepared during a period of inflation and on the eve of a recession. The text of the Third Plan, published in March 1959, defined the results of the period 1954–1957 in the following terms:
“The reading of the statistics confirms what even the least attentive observer could perceive in our economic development: the projected levels of production were not only reached but clearly exceeded.”
This exceptional situation caused the Third Plan to lose about one year with respect to its national objectives. For that reason a supplementary plan was prepared in 1960 in order to redefine the targets for the years 1960 and 1961. The forecasts and results of the Third Plan show that the growth of gross domestic product occurred in accordance with the expectations of the supplementary plan, although imports increased more rapidly than anticipated.
While exports did not grow as quickly as had been hoped, the balance of payments became largely surplus beginning in 1959. Gold and foreign exchange reserves rose from 645 million dollars in 1957 to nearly 3 billion dollars by the end of 1961. Industrial production reached an index of 131 in 1961, compared with the plan’s target of 133. Agricultural production reached the predicted index of 120, whereas service production remained about seven points below the forecast, reaching 125.5 instead of the expected 132.8.
With the Fourth Plan, covering the period 1962–1965, the title itself changed, highlighting the shift in several essential objectives. Three major factors transforming the French economy were taken into account. First, the arrival of a larger generation of young people reaching working age during the Fourth Plan. Second, the implementation of the rules of the European Common Market and the removal of quantitative restrictions on foreign trade, which permanently opened the French economy to international competition. Third, the profound transformation of France’s relations with French-speaking African states, in other words the process of decolonization.
Two broad categories of objectives were therefore proposed. The first concerned economic expansion and development. The second aimed at a “better use of the fruits of expansion.” Development was to be directed toward both national objectives and individual objectives. A growth of 24 percent in gross domestic product, corresponding to an annual increase of about 5.5 percent, was projected between 1962 and 1965, taking into account the difficulties of maintaining both internal and external balance.
It was considered more important than ever to provide the French economy with the means to face international competition successfully while also maintaining assistance to poorer countries that had formerly been French colonies. The second objective concerned the use of the benefits produced by economic expansion. Contrary to what might be assumed, this did not refer to a policy of income distribution.
The economist François Perroux pointed out this gap when writing about the Fourth French Plan. According to him, the planners’ idea referred mainly to the orientation of expansion rather than to the distribution of its results. The text of the Fourth Plan suggested that the emerging consumer society, inspired partly by aspects of American life, might be guided toward a broader conception of human well-being.
In particular, the process of urbanization, supported by agricultural modernization and the development of services, was expected to achieve a better balance in the distribution of population. This raised the question of whether the opportunity should be used to undertake a lasting national project capable of improving living conditions.
Two types of action should therefore have been considered: support for the less developed regions of the country and the adoption of an income policy. The explicit adoption of this dual approach would only appear later with the Fifth Plan.