Nordea Economic Outlook: Nordic growth convergence

Nordea’s new economic forecast projects global growth of 3.0% this year and around 3.2% in 2017 and 3.3% in 2018.

– The growth is driven by Emerging Markets where the outlook for many countries is improving as commodity prices stabilise. However, growth in the advanced economies will stagnate over the forecast horizon. All in all, the global economy is likely to see relatively slow growth in the years ahead, says Helge J. Pedersen, Nordea’s Group Chief Economist.

In the Nordic countries, economic growth in Sweden has in recent years been significantly higher than in other countries. But now growth appears to be falling in Sweden, while increasing in the other countries. The slowdown of the Swedish economy is mainly due to lower exports. Domestic demand has shown strong growth over the past years, but private consumption is likely to shift into a lower gear next year as the effects of stimulus measures have begun to fade.

In Norway, economic key figures have over the summer been on the strong side. Unemployment appears to have peaked and house prices rise more than expected. Mainland growth will pick up as the fall in oil investment now seems to taper off. That will help the industries affected by the oil slump. Meanwhile, we expect the rest of the economy, which has held up well during the oil downturn, to grow at a healthy clip going forward.

In Denmark, we expect slightly more positive tailwinds over the next couple of years as recent years’ increase in employment bolsters consumption and investment activity. The biggest threats to higher growth mainly come from abroad because of the subdued global trade.

Only fragile growth lies ahead for the Finnish economy in the next few years. After reaching 1% in 2016, growth is expected to moderate again. The export outlook remains dim due to low global growth and weak world trade.

Read Economic Outlook here:

About Nordea Asset Management
Nordea Asset Management (NAM, AuM 202 bn EUR*), is part of the Nordea Group, the largest financial services group in Northern Europe (AuM 300 bn EUR*). NAM offers European and global investors exposure to a broad set of investment funds. We serve a wide range of clients and distributors which include banks, asset managers, independent financial advisors and insurance companies.

Nordea Asset Management has a presence in Cologne, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, Helsinki, London, Luxembourg, Madrid, Milan, New York, Oslo, Paris, Sao Paulo, Singapore, Stockholm, Vienna and Zurich. Nordea’s local presence goes hand in hand with the objective of being accessible and offering the best service to clients.

Nordea’s success is based on a sustainable and unique multi-boutique approach that combines the expertise of specialised internal boutiques with exclusive external competences allowing us to deliver alpha in a stable way for the benefit of our clients.  NAM solutions cover all asset classes from fixed income and equity to multi asset solutions, and manage local and European as well as US, global and emerging market products.

*Source: Nordea, 30.06.2016