PARIS, Feb 18 - French Finance Minister Francis Mer said in an interview published on Wednesday that France was currently at an annual growth rate of two percent and that investment and industrial production were recovering. "We are at an annual growth rate of around two percent," Mer told French newspaper Le Parisien. "It's not the boom being seen in the United States or China but it is considerably better than the two previous years." "In particular, it is in line with the reasonable hypothesis we have for 2004 of 1.7 percent," he added. Mer also said the government would cut a French regional business tax -- dubbed professional tax -- by 2.7 billion euros over a two-year basis.//