Finland entered a recession within the closing quarter of 2022, whereas the Swedish financial system additionally dipped, official statistics confirmed Tuesday.
The 0.6-percent drop in Finnish GDP was the second consecutive quarter of adverse progress — the technical definition of a recession.
Finland’s financial system has suffered from accelerating inflation — which reached 8.4 % in January — in addition to the financial penalties of the struggle in Ukraine, Statistics Finland mentioned.
Each shoppers and companies have much less confidence sooner or later and these “weakened expectations started to be realised within the latter half of the yr,” the workplace mentioned.
From October to December, the amount of Finnish exports decreased by 2.9 % from the extent within the earlier quarter, whereas imports dipped by 2.4 %.
For the yr as an entire, nevertheless, the Finnish financial system grew final yr by two % in comparison with 2021.
Whereas Sweden has not seen two consecutive declines in GDP, its financial system nonetheless shrank, the nationwide statistics workplace SCB mentioned.
Swedish GDP fell by 0.2 % within the fourth quarter, in comparison with the identical interval a yr earlier.
“The decline is being felt in lots of elements of the financial system, with broad declines in enterprise funding and family consumption,” Jessica Engdahl from SCB mentioned in a press release.
For the complete yr of 2022, the Swedish financial system grew by 2.6 %, the SCB mentioned.
The Swedish central financial institution expects GDP to fall by 1.1 % this yr, consistent with the European common, in line with its newest forecast printed in early February.
In Finland, the federal government and the central financial institution forecast a small decline in GDP in 2023, of round 0.2 %, earlier than progress returns in 2024 and 2025, in line with their newest forecast in December.