PARIS (AFP) -- France reduced its budget overspending to 2.5 percent of gross domestic product last year and brought its public debt down to 63.9 percent of GDP, official figures showed.

The data from the statistics institute INSEE were below the figures predicted by the government, which had forecast a public deficit of 2.6 percent and public debt of 64.6 percent.

A country's public deficit is the difference between state revenues and public spending. The public debt is the cumulation of past annual spending deficits.

France's EU partners launched an action against Paris in 2003 after the French public deficit breached an EU limit of 3.0 percent of GDP the previous year.

But the action was dropped in January this year after France brought its deficit below the three-percent limit in 2005 and was seen to be reducing it even further in 2006.

Both France's center-right UMP government and the opposition Socialists have highlighted problems facing France over its public deficit and debt during campaigning for a presidential election at the end of April.

The French economy grew by 2.1 percent in 2006, with the help of a rise of 0.7 percent in activity in the final quarter of the year, revised official data showed.

The latest growth data however still put France in the bottom half of economies in the 13-nation eurozone, which averaged growth of 2.6 percent in 2006.

The French government had predicted growth last year would be between 2.0 and 2.5 percent.

The French unemployment rate fell 0.1 percentage points to 8.4 percent of the working population in February, official data showed signaling the lowest figure since June 1983.

A government source said that this unemployment rate was calculated according to norms established by the International Labor Organisation.

The source said that under a different calculation used by the French labor ministry, the rate also fell by 0.1 percentage points to the same level of 8.4 percent.

The government source said the number of registered people looking for work had fallen by 1.0 percent to 2,066,100 people.

The figures were published in the midst of a campaign for the first round of a presidential election on April 22, in which unemployment is a central issue. France has suffered from high unemployment for years, but in the last year or so the rate has shown a steady, although erratic, decline.