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French PM unveils small business act to tackle unemployment

Xinhua, June 9, 2015 Adjust font size:

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls on Tuesday unveiled new proposals aimed to help the country's small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) boost hiring.

"The government is committed to those who want to succeed and to help their country succeed," Valls said, announcing 18 new measures to fix joblessness.

Valls offered a 4,000 euros (4,480 U.S. dollars) bonus to 1.2 million firms that hire their first employee for a year-long contract, hoping the new measures will create up to 80,000 posts.

Short-term contracts can now be renewed twice instead of only once. Also introduced was a cut in labor charges and a suspension of additional hiring obligations that small businesses needed to do when recruiting new workers.

The new measure come as 26,200 more unemployed people were recorded at the end of April, pushing up total unemployment to a record 3.536 million in French mainland.

President Francois Hollande aims to reduce the number of unemployment benefit claims to less than 3 million by the end of his 2017 mandate.

He has tried to stimulate hiring by offering companies a 30 billion euros reduction in payroll charges, improving training, facilitating recruitment rules and pumping millions of euros into financing job contracts in the public sector. (1 euro = 1.12 U.S. dollars) Endit