The Bank of Finland has improved its forecast for the Finnish economy by nearly one percentage point of GDP, it announced on Tuesday — but still expects post-crisis growth to be sluggish.
The bank had said in September that it expected GDP to shrink by 4.7 percent next year. That's now changed to 3.8 percent in a new forecast published at an event in Helsinki on Tuesday.
Olli Rehn, the bank's governor, said at a press conference on Tuesday that Finland has to balance different concerns in steering the economy through the pandemic.
"My main message is that in decision-making and economic policy we now have to be able to do two things: deal with the acute health and economic crisis and on the other hand resolve the long-term economic and employment problems," said Rehn.
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The bank says that the winter will still be hard economically, but coronavirus vaccines offer some hope that the crisis will end in Finland and worldwide next year.
The bank said that the coronavirus-inspired recession had not been as harsh on Finland as other European countries, but the winter would still be difficult.
"The corona crisis leaves a permanent mark on the Finnish economy in our forecast, but the recovery looks like it will be slightly quicker than the recovery after the financial crisis," said the bank's head of forecasting, Meri Ostbaum.