Word: autos
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Surging French private enterprise in the middle of the world's worst economic crisis in 50 years? Something's up, right? Indeed there is. The motor driving France's bustling start-up action is an innovation known as the auto-entrepreneur - a government scheme introduced in January to facilitate the formidable process of founding a small business in France. The scheme cuts through the jungle of administrative red tape usually required to launch a company and dramatically lightens the heavy taxes and social charges other companies pay. While regular outfits face set charges whether business is booming or bust, auto...
...surprisingly, the scheme has accounted for more than half of all new companies founded thus far this year. "The auto-entrepreneur plan has been an impressive success, beyond what we'd been counting on," says Hervé Novelli, secretary of state for small- and medium-size businesses...
...there are some caveats to the scheme's success. First, it's primarily aimed at individuals who already have jobs or unemployed or retired people who yearn to try their hand at a service they think might find a market. Because of that, new companies created by auto-entrepreneurs start out as single-person operations and usually as part-time or moonlighting ventures. If business starts booming, neophyte owners seeking to expand by taking on employees have to register under the normal labor regime, which means assuming the taxes and salary-linked social charges that prove so dissuasive to many...
...answering that call? For now, two-thirds of auto-entrepreneurs are men, who, on average, are age 40. About 33% are salaried employees starting up a sideline business, 25% are unemployed and 6% are retirees. Later this year, the program will take private enterprise to the public sector by opening auto-entrepreneur to civil servants. If it continues at its current pace, the scheme will prove that France not only has a word for entrepreneur, but also a growing army of people it fits. Read "Much Greater Paris...
...sharp drop in demand for Alberta oil, plus auto-plant shutdowns in Ontario, have pushed Canada's trade deficit for May to an all-time high of $1.2 billion. This is in contrast to to a much smaller merchandise-trade deficit of $346 million reported in April and a healthy surplus of $979 million in March, according to the government agency Statistics Canada. (See 10 things to buy during the recession...