ZCZC
BCN-23
SWEDEN-ECONOMY-UNEMPLOYMENT-RATE
Sweden predicted to face downturn after economic boom
STOCKHOLM, Oct. 28, 2018 (BSS/Xinhua) – Sweden is facing a period of
slower economic growth and rising unemployment rates after an unusually
persistent period of financial growth, Swedish Television reported on
Saturday.
According to the National Institute on Economic Research, Sweden’s growth
rate will peak at 2.4 percent this year and then come to a halt in 2019.
Moreover, while the unemployment rate is expected to continue to sink in the
coming year and dip to 6.2 percent, it will then start to rise, the
Institute’s latest prognosis states.
“According to our estimates, we are at the peak of the economic boom now,
even if it is hard to give an exact timing for that,” said Ylva Heden
Westerdahl, head of forecasting at the National Institute on Economic
Research, a state agency.
However, analyses diverge among different forecasters, with the Riksbank,
Sweden’s Central Bank, predicting that the unemployment rate will hit bottom
levels this year and then begin to slowly rise as early as next year.
The last time Sweden experienced an economic boom was over a decade ago,
before the 2008 financial crisis.
“If our prognoses turn out to be accurate, this will be the longest
economic upturn since 1960,” said Olle Holmgren, an economist at the SEB
bank. He also suggested that the instability on the Stockholm stock market,
which recently fell by around 10 percent in a month, could be an early sign
of an impending financial downturn. It could mean that “investors are seeing
something that has yet to show up in the economic statistics,” said Holmgren.
BSS/XINHUA/HR/1455